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Ad Code: 4
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watercolor
10 x14
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| Known for her South Carolina portraits, her landscapes, and miniatures, Caroline Carson Petigru was the daughter of James Petigru of Charleston, South Carolina. The Petigrus of Charleston were descendents of James Pettigrew (d. 1784), who had immigrated to Pennsylvania from Scotland, but eventually settled in the Abbeville District of South Carolina. In this region a branch of the Pettigrew family flourished. This branch changed its name around 1809, in an effort to claim Huguenot origins, and became prominent in Charleston society under the name Petigru.
Kinship provided a safety net for the Petigru women to cope with their situations in southern society. James helped his sisters who remained with him in Abbeville to turn their farm into a family estate that could succor needy kin. Generous hospitality among relatives provided respites from troubled marriages and social opportunities for adolescent daughters. But it was two of James's own daughters who took their search for autonomy furthest. Sue King published fiction and constructed for herself a persona somewhat at odds with that of a proper Charleston matron. Caroline Carson Petigru lived in the North during the Civil War, pursued an artistic career, and also lived abroad.
The family's prominence declined following the Civil War. The older generation died, most of the middle generation lost the resources necessary to sustain an elite status, and less than half of the younger generation of women found husbands. Young people left the low country in search of better opportunities. Education, which had been the key to upward mobility, then became their insurance against poverty by providing training for a teaching career.
In postbellum Charleston, Caroline, along with Katherine Middleton Huger, was one of a few local Charleston artists represented at a well-attended exhibition in 1883, when many paintings were shown on loan from New York City at a show organized by the Carolina Art Association. She was known to have signed her portraits as Caroline Carson, or "CC".
Caroline Carson Petigru ended her life as an artist in exile in Italy
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