From the Cutting Room Floor: Lanneau’s Art Store

Occasionally we’ll bring you exclusive glimpses of Alice and her life that didn’t make it into the final volume. This entry from co-author Dwight McInvaill.

Lanneau’s Art Store

B&W photograph (scan) of Lanneau’s Art Store (238 King Street). A woman and young girl are entering the building. Sign for “Scwartz” [Louis Schwartz] mounted on side door frame. The building was demolished for the construction of Charleston Place. Courtesy of the Fairfield County Historical Museum. From https://www.historiccharleston.org/

Alice loved books.  In 1914, she published her first—Twenty Drawings of the Pringle House— in partnership with Lanneau’s Art Store of Charleston (one such image shown above).  Lanneau’s Art Store was one of those wonderful, local, small businesses that have always helped artistic communities to thrive.  Founded in 1897 when William S. Lanneau bought out William E. Holmes & Company at 321 King Street, it received its new name in 1905 and was moved in November 1906 to 238 King Street by partners Lanneau, Melchers, and Harry O. Withington.  Managed by Lanneau until 1927, it continued operations there until liquidation in June 1953.

From 1907 to 1953, the African American Edward Eugene Rivers framed pictures there for Alice and others.  Alice also used this firm as the shipper of her watercolors to exhibitions nationwide.[i]  Lanneau’s may have also been Alice’s source for “Kodak’s supplies, expert developing, printing, and enlargements [at] special prices.”  It also had, of course, the full range of papers, paints, and canvases along with “all the new and artistic things.”[ii]

On display regularly were artworks by locals such as William Aiken Walker “whose many paintings of the areas throughout the south bear the sticker [even today] of Lanneau’s Art Store.”  One can well imagine the shop as a busy place bubbling continually with both formal and casual creative interactions.  Lanneau’s appealed moreover to hobbyists by featuring an amateur model supply depot under the supervision of brothers Frank and St. Julien Melchers.[iii]

The company did, of course, the typical civic sponsorships of worthwhile community activities.  These included rousing sporting events, such as exhibition baseball games featuring the Citadel Cadets versus the Washington Light Infantry––of which Lanneau as a Major was the Light Infantry’s military commander as well as its baseball team manager.  Lanneau’s Art Store’s patronage likewise ranged upwards to far more high-brow pursuits including the complete financial backing for an exhibit of early American and Colonial wallpapers brought to the Charleston Museum by the prestigious American Federation of Arts. [iv]

References and Resources

[i] “Lanneau’s Store Going Out of Business After 56 Years,” 47; “U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 for Edward Eugene Rivers” in Ancestry.com; Alice Ravenel Huger Smithto Erwin S. Barrie of the Grand Central Art Galleries, New York, July 13, 1926, South Carolina Historical Society, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith Papers.

[ii] “Backward Glances,” News and Courier, August 8, 1952, 4.

[iii] August P. Trovaioli and Roulhac B. Toledano, William Aiken Walker:  Southern Genre Painter (Gretna, Louisiana:  Pelican Publishing Company, Inc., 2008 [Originally, Louisiana State University Press, 1972 and 2000]), 53.  .

[iv] To reference W. S. Lanneau as the Major of the Washington Light Infantry and as its baseball team manager, see respectively “Exhibition Base Ball Game,” Evening Post, April 4, 1903, p4, and “Higher Standard for Soldiers Here:  Major Lanneau Plans to Increase Efficiency of the First Battalion,” Evening Post, February 4, 1908, 10.  As for Lanneau Art Store’s financial support of a special historic wallpaper exhibition at the Charleston Museum, see “Special Wall Paper Exhibit,” Bulletin of the Charleston Museum,vol. XVII, no. 4 (October 1922), 43.

[1] “Lanneau’s Store Going Out of Business After 56 Years,” 47; “U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 for Edward Eugene Rivers” in Ancestry.com; Alice Ravenel Huger Smithto Erwin S. Barrie of the Grand Central Art Galleries, New York, July 13, 1926, South Carolina Historical Society, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith Papers.
[1] “Backward Glances,” News and Courier, August 8, 1952, 4.
[1] August P. Trovaioli and Roulhac B. Toledano, William Aiken Walker:  Southern Genre Painter (Gretna, Louisiana:  Pelican Publishing Company, Inc., 2008 [Originally, Louisiana State University Press, 1972 and 2000]), 53. [1] To reference W. S. Lanneau as the Major of the Washington Light Infantry and as its baseball team manager, see respectively “Exhibition Base Ball Game,” Evening Post, April 4, 1903, p4, and “Higher Standard for Soldiers Here:  Major Lanneau Plans to Increase Efficiency of the First Battalion,” Evening Post, February 4, 1908, 10.  As for Lanneau Art Store’s financial support of a special historic wallpaper exhibition at the Charleston Museum, see “Special Wall Paper Exhibit,” Bulletin of the Charleston Museum,vol. XVII, no. 4 (October 1922), 43.