AN ECCENTRIC PLACE OF VERY HIGH QUALITY: OSSABAW ISLAND, GEORGIA AS A CONTEXT FOR THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORICAL, CULTURAL, AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE ON THE ATLANTIC COAST by LINDA ORR KING Under the Direction of Glenn T. Eskew, PhD ABSTRACT This sweeping narrative demonstrates how Ossabaw Island’s landowners, some with a dedicated will and others unwittingly, managed to galvanize social, cultural, scientific, and political forces to preserve its natural environment despite a culture motivated by profit. Although geographically isolated, Ossabaw Island’s owners and inhabitants were active participants within the Atlantic World. Ossabaw’s owners and inhabitants adapted environmental strategies and social ideologies in accommodation not only with Ossabaw’s fragile barrier island ecosystems, but also with Southeastern coastal Georgia’s social and political movements. In particular, this work examines how the advantages of wealth and privilege provided the catalyst that ultimately benefited rather than exploited social and economic conditions on the island, leading Ossabaw Island to become the first barrier island Heritage Preserve on the southern Atlantic Coast. In addition to an analysis of unpublished manuscripts, maps, correspondence, and oral histories, this endeavor expands on the current knowledge about barrier island planters, slaves, freedmen, tenant farmers, lumbermen, boatmen, industrialists, and privileged families. It builds on previous works by including the guests, artists, scientists, writers, and environmentalists who visited the island. Furthermore, it investigates their interaction within political, economic, cultural, religious, and ideological spheres. Ossabaw Island’s indigenous societies, landed gentry, and wealthy owners shaped its cultural and economic identity from the 1560s to the modern day. It analyzes additional materials, including colonial and plantation records, official and personal correspondence, travel narratives, newspaper and magazine articles, and oral histories. This study seeks to expand the discourse on the exchange of sea island economies and societies well beyond the Savannah coastal region of the Atlantic World. The Ossabaw community evolved through conflict and compromise, and eventually encompassed not only sons and daughters of privilege and descendants of former slaves, but also artists, writers, scientists, and scholars from around the world. The central theme of this narrative history is the study of the motivating forces, both natural and synthetic, that shaped Ossabaw Island’s current distinctive cultural, environmental, and educational mission, with the major emphasis placed on the events of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Cette thèse dépeint le contexte artistique dans lequel Marianne Stokes évolue des années 1880 au tournant du siècle suivant. Une étude approfondie a été menée, qui permet de retracer ses premières années d’études d’art à Munich et à Paris, puis au sein de plusieurs colonies d’artistes en France, au Danemark et en Angleterre. Afin de restituer le milieu créatif de Marianne Stokes, des textes et des manuels d’histoire de l’art ancien et actuel furent étudiés. D’autres recherches furent entreprises, appuyées sur la correspondance d’artistes camarades de Marianne Stokes, et sur l’étude de leur accueil critique en France et en Angleterre. Des publications de l’époque sont au centre de ces recherches : autobiographie, narration de voyage, et correspondance. Cette thèse comprend aussi des études comparatives de toiles de Mariannes Stokes avec celles de plusieurs de ses contemporains.Nous cherchons à démontrer que l’art de Marianne Stokes est difficilement réductible à un mouvement artistique en particulier, mais présente les qualités de nombreux styles : naturalisme, impressionnisme, symbolisme, décoratif. Evoluant parmi ces nombreux courants artistiques, l’art de Marianne Stokes possède un certain silence, un sentiment de piété qui est la ligne directrice de son œuvre. / This dissertation recreates the evolution of Marianne Stokes’ art within the context of her artistic milieu from 1880 to the turn of the century. These studies concern first her early school years in Munich and Paris, and then her years among artist colonies in France, Denmark and England. Stokes’ paintings are compared to those of her contemporaries within the artist colonies. Contemporary texts, such as travel journals, biographies, letters and press articles, are used to accurately reconstruct the artist’s milieu. This thesis demonstrates that Marianne Stokes’ body of work cannot be reduced to a specific artistic movement; instead, the style of her paintings ranges from naturalist, decorative, and impressionist to symbolist. Nevertheless, the paintings of Marianne Stokes maintain one distinctive trait; they express a certain silence, an articulation of the artist’s personal piety.

The diploma work deals with the paintings of Antonín Hudeček from around 1900, which are viewed from two positions. The first thematic area includes the analysis of selected thought sources (the topic of a soul or a mood in the art), the motives (mirroring) and the themes (bathing boys) of Hudeček's paintings, which are treated with regard to the period art criticism a thought currents. The second part is made by analysis of some art sources which were essential for Antonín Hudeček's paintings around 1900. These were especially Hudeček's training with figuralists in Prague and Munich and the possible foreign inspiration, most importantly from the context of the contemporary art colonies and informal art groups. Fundamental theme of the work is the relationship of figure and landscape in the work of Antonín Hudeček around 1900. The catalogue of Hudeček's paintings from this period and excerpts from selected periodicals serve as the main methodological tool for comparison of Hudeček's work with other artists. Hudeček's schematic biography is also presented in the appendix of the work.