Background
Hutty was born in Grand Haven, Michigan, United States, on September 15, 1877.
Hutty was born in Grand Haven, Michigan, United States, on September 15, 1877.
Alfred Hutty received his primary education, attending the Grand Haven public schools. At age of fifteen, he won a scholarship to study stained glass design at the Kansas City School of Fine Arts. But due to his family's financial situation, Hutty turned down the scholarship.
Hutty designed windows in Kansas City before serving for eight years at Tiffany's Studio in New York designing stained glass. With the onset of the First World War, he left this job to serve as an artist, working on camouflage of ships. Alfred Hutty visited Charleston, South Carolina, in 1919 and fell in love with the city. He was hired to develop an art school for the Carolina Art Association (now the Gibbes Museum of Art) from 1920 till 1924. Eventually, he became a vital part of the city’s cultural community, and spent much of his time between Charleston and Woodstock.
While in Charleston, Alfred Hutty met and befriended local printmakers, like DuBose Heyward and John Bennett, and started to produce etchings since 1921. He became a founding member of the Etcher’s Club, organized in 1923. He was nationally renowned as a printmaker and was instrumental in increasing the medium’s popularity, although Hutty was also a distinguished painter in watercolor and oil.
The main subject of his numerous works was the local scene: landscapes, street scenes, and vernacular architecture. Moreover, he painted several murals in Charleston and also was active in the city’s early preservation movement.
Later Hutty purchased a farm in Woodstock, New York with stunning views of the Catskill Mountains. Until the end of his life, the artist divided his time between Woodstock and Charleston.
Alfred Hutty is considered one of the leading artists of the Charleston Renaissance. He became the first American artist ever elected to the British Society of the Graphic Arts.
His works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Detroit Art Institute, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Bibliotheque Nationale, the Fogg Museum of Art, the Gibbes Museum of Art and a number of other museums.
In Magnolia Gardens
Under the Shady Spanish Moss
Woman with Three Baskets
Wash Day
View Across a Creek
Court by the Studio
Through the Woods
Sewing Lessons
Charleston
Sunlit Snow
In a Southern City
Market Day
Red Roofs
Charleston Garden
Southern Shack with Figures
Southern Oaks/Going Home
Spring Landscape
Spring County Landscape
Southern Autumn Birch
Figure in Autumn landscape
Cabbage Row (Catfish)
Corner of Huguenot Church, Charleston
Untitled (Charleston Street Scene)
Footlight Players Workshop
Lowcountry Marsh Scene
An Old Landmark, Charleston, 1922
In Cypress Gardens
The Ride Home
The Patriarch-Middleton Gardens
On the Way Home
In You Is, or Is You Ain't?
Hutty was a member of a great number of organizations, including the British Society of Graphic Arts, the Society of American Etchers, the Salmagundi Club of New York, the Chicago Society of Etchers, the Allied Artists of America, the California Society of Printmakers, the Prairie Printmakers, the National Arts Club, the American Watercolor Society, the Southern Printmakers, and the Rockport and Woodstock Art Associations.
Alfred Hutty was married to Bessie Burris Crafton, with whom he had one child.
