In the 1970s and 1980s, the paintings of Manning Williams depicted Charleston city scenes, suburban landscapes, roadways, friends, and family. As David Houston writes in Manning Williams: Reinventing Narrative Painting, that “body of work . . . may be understood as narratives of a larger community in the context of place and time” (page x). Among these paintings is one that is, arguably, Williams’s masterpiece, Jack Island Trials (1983–1985). Houston writes that its sheer size and compositional complexity identify it as “a culmination of…

In the 1970s and 1980s, the paintings of Manning Williams depicted Charleston city scenes, suburban landscapes, roadways, friends, and family. As David Houston writes in Manning Williams: Reinventing Narrative Painting, that “body of work . . . may be understood as narratives of a larger community in the context of place and time” (page x). Among these paintings is one that is, arguably, Williams’s masterpiece, Jack Island Trials (1983–1985). Houston writes that its sheer size and compositional complexity identify it as “a culmination of…

In the 1970s and 1980s, the paintings of Manning Williams depicted Charleston city scenes, suburban landscapes, roadways, friends, and family. As David Houston writes in Manning Williams: Reinventing Narrative Painting, that “body of work . . . may be understood as narratives of a larger community in the context of place and time” (page x). Among these paintings is one that is, arguably, Williams’s masterpiece, Jack Island Trials (1983–1985). Houston writes that its sheer size and compositional complexity identify it as “a culmination of…