Painter-etcher L.O. Griffith’s The Kentucky Side depicts a community of houseboats and shantyboats on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River.

Griffith was an Indiana native and a member of the Nashville, Brown County, Indiana, artist colony, having moved there from Chicago, Illinois. He worked throughout the South, producing paintings and etchings of scenes in South Carolina, Louisiana and Texas.

The Kentucky Side reminds us of the Harrods Creek area, but we have no documentation of Griffith’s ever visiting Louisville. However, there are two factors to consider. First, Louisville’s shantyboat phenomenon in the early 20th century attracted established artists from Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Second, Griffith was a charter member of the Chicago Society of Etchers, and Louisville’s own C. Winston Haberer, an artist known for his Ohio River scenes, was a member of the same organization.

Griffith had a long and honored career. He showed his prints throughout the 1930s and 1940s, for the most part in Indiana. He was an award-winning exhibitor in the Hoosier Salon, and the H. Lieber Co. in Indianapolis regularly showed his work. Lieber mounted a retrospective in 1943, and the Division of Graphic Arts at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., had a show of his prints in 1945.

The Kentucky Side is a rare Griffith print; this is the only one we’ve ever seen and is featured in PFA Press’s Black and White: Kentucky Prints and Printmakers, available here.