I recently purchased a watercolor at the Columbus Arts Council’s gift shop at the Rosenzweig Arts Center. It was of the gullies at Allison’s Wells by the late Dr. Mary Evelyn Stringer, a long-time art professor at MUW. Allison’s Wells was an old resort located nine miles north of Canton which was established in the 1870s and burned in 1963. From 1948 until 1963, every late spring, summer, and early fall there were gatherings of the Allison Art Colony which usually included MSCW (MUW) art department faculty and students.
The art colony’s beginnings were described by Hosford Latimer Fontaine in “Allison’s Wells, The Last Mississippi Spa”: “The birth of The Allison Art Colony was in 1948 when Leigh Latimer was walking in the rose garden with John and Hosford Fontaine and Mildred and Karl Wolf, and Leigh exclaimed ‘Wouldn’t this be a grand place for an art colony’.” So began the Allison Art Colony which within a few years under the leadership of noted Jackson artist Karl Wolfe, gained a national reputation and in 1949 was the subject of a Sunday feature in the New York Times.
The colony included faculty and students from colleges across the south including the University of Florida, Newcomb College, LSU, Washington University, Georgia Tech, Ole Miss, the W and a number of others.
A real “moving force” when the colony was beginning was Dr. Ralph Hudson, the head of MSCW’s Art and Design Department. For about 12 years, art students from the W attended Allison Art Colony weekends under Hudson and faculty members Mary Evelyn Stringer and Eugenia Summer. According to Hudson almost 200 W art students attended sessions of the Allison Art Colony.
The contribution of the W instructors to the art colony was more than just teaching. Stringer and Summer served as mentors to the students and often contributed paintings to colony fund raisers. In 1954, noted colony artists Karl and Mildred Wolfe, Caroline Compton, Andrew Bucci, Marie Hull, and the W’s Mary Evelyn Stringer gave paintings that were the grand door prizes at the art colony’s “Artists and Models Fancy Ball.” Mrs. Fontaine wrote that Hudson, Stringer, Summer, and the students who came with them “brought freshness and gaiety” to the colony. (The Art and Design Department building on the W campus was designed by Hudson in 1960 and is now Summer Hall and the Ralph Hudson Art Gallery.)
When I saw the watercolor by Dr. Stringer, I immediately recognized it as being the gullies at Allison’s Wells. Behind the site where Allison’s Wells once stood is a series of deep gullies. They run along the north facing high ground overlooking the Big Black River bottom. A picturesque scene, they became the subject of drawings and paintings by artists at the art colony.
My memories of the gullies, which are located on the property of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi, have nothing to do with the art colony. For over 20 years I served on the staff of Episcopal Camp Bratton-Green which is located just across Way Road from the old resort site. A popular camp game was “capture the flag” and for many years it was played in the gullies.
I recognized the “Clay Monolith” of Dr. Stringer’s painting as a pinnacle deep in the gullies around whose base a flag had sometime been placed during a rousing game of capture the flag. It is not only a beautiful watercolor but brought back grand memories of summers of 25 years ago. The gullies gradually became overgrown with vegetation and the game moved to better locations, but memories of the gullies remain.
The gallery gift shop at the Rosenzweig Arts Center has many fascinating and beautiful works by local artists and craftsmen for sale. It is well worth a Christmas shopping visit there. Who knows, you might even stumble across your own memories brought back to life by a local artist.
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 43 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.