In the Smokies’ bear country, an artistic retreat

The leaders of the 200-year-old community have done their best to make the main route through town - US Route 441, which continues through the park to Cherokee, N.C., and the southwestern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway - as attractive as possible. There is a world-class aquarium and legitimate historical sites such as a settler’s cabin. And the foothills surrounding Gatlinburg boast more than 60 art and antiques galleries, craft shops, inns, and tearooms.

Atop one of the hills is Hippensteal’s Mountain View Inn, where my wife and I stayed, a place far more in touch with the park’s wooded peaks, streams, and mellow lowlands than Gatlinburg’s commercial district. Built 18 years ago as a bed-and-breakfast, Hippensteal’s offers 11 spacious rooms, art-filled walls, and memorable breakfasts.

Much of the inn has an artistic feel because it is owned by Vern Hippensteal, 60, an acclaimed painter of the area’s natural wonders and direct descendant (eight generations removed) of Gatlinburg’s founding pioneer family, and his wife, Lisa, 52, also a native, whose family owned a hotel in the center of town.

The two-story inn’s inducements include porches with rockers, a lobby with a stone fireplace and wicker furniture, a well-stocked library, a spacious, glass-enclosed dining room, a kitchen open to guests seeking sweets, and walls adorned with limited-edition prints of Hippensteal’s watercolors, which evoke the harmony and timelessness of the region in vibrant tones.

Each room is distinctive and named for one of Hippensteal’s paintings. “Into the Woods’’ was a fall scene, thus our room was decorated in fall colors. All rooms have queen beds, air conditioning, a reading chair, radio, television, and a whirlpool tub. Hippensteal’s studio on the second floor also serves as a gallery, supplementing two galleries and a frame shop he operates nearby.