Provincetown Printers was an art colony in

Provincetown, Massachusetts Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States Census, Provincet ...

during the early 20th-century of artists who created art using

woodblock printing Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. Each page or image is create ...

techniques. It was the first group of its kind in the United States, developed in an area when European and American avant-garde artists visited in number after

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. The "Provincetown Print", a white-line woodcut print, was attributed to this group.

Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt (April 13, 1878 – April 21, 1955) was an American artist who painted seascapes and depictions of New Mexico's indigenous culture. Background He was born in Tullstorp, Malmö, Skåne County, Sweden the son of Ni ...

is credited with developing the technique, based upon Japanese

ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surfac ...

woodblock printing, though there is evidence that a lesser-known Provincetown artist,

Edith Lake Wilkinson Edith Lake Wilkinson (August 23, 1868 – July 19, 1957) was an artist who lived and painted in Provincetown, Massachusetts during the early decades of the 20th century until she was committed to an asylum for the mentally ill in 1924. Wilkinson's ...

, was making white-line prints in 1914, a year earlier than Nordfeldt's first known efforts.

Blanche Lazzell Blanche Lazzell (October 10, 1878 – June 1, 1956) was an American painter, printmaking, printmaker and designer. Known especially for her Woodcut#White-line woodcut, white-line woodcuts, she was an early modernism, modernist American artist, ...

is said to have mastered the technique. Rather than creating separate woodblocks for each color, one block was made and painted. Small groves between the elements of the design created the white line. Because the artists often used soft colors, they sometimes have the appearance of a watercolor painting. Weinrich Broken Fence

Early artists in the group included Ethel Mars, Ada Gilmore, Mildred McMillen,

Maud Hunt Squire Maud Hunt Squire (January 30, 1873 – October 25, 1954) was an American painter and printmaker. She had a lifelong relationship with artist Ethel Mars, with whom she traveled and lived in the United States and France. Early life and education ...

, Juliette Nichols and Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt. Other artists included

William Zorach William Zorach (February 28, 1889 – November 15, 1966) was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and writer. He won the Logan Medal of the arts. He is notable for being at the forefront of American artists embracing cubism, as well as for ...

Ferol Sibley Warthen Ferol Katherine Sibley Warthen (May 22, 1890 – January 21, 1986), also known as Mrs. Lee R. Warthen, was an American painter and printmaker. Warthen was born Ferol Sibley in Aberdeen, South Dakota, Aberdeen, South Dakota. She received a full s ...

Karl Knaths Karl Knaths (October 21, 1891 – March 9, 1971) was an American artist whose personal approach to the Cubist aesthetic led him to create paintings which, while abstract, contained readily identifiable subjects. In addition to the Cubist painte ...

, and

Agnes Weinrich Agnes Weinrich (July 16, 1873 – April 17, 1946) was an American visual artist. In the early twentieth century, she played a critical role in introducing cubist theory to American artists, collectors, and the general public and became one of th ...

Edna Boies Hopkins Edna Boies Hopkins (October 13, 1872 – March 24, 1937) was an American artist who made woodblock prints, based upon Japanese ukiyo-e art and Arthur Wesley Dow's formula of three main elements: '' notan'', a balance of light and dark, line and c ...

, a friend of Squires and Mars from the

Art Academy of Cincinnati The Art Academy of Cincinnati is a private college of art and design in Cincinnati, Ohio, accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. It was founded as the McMicken School of Design in 1869, and was a department of the U ...

, also visited the community. Bill Evaul, a writer for ''Print Review'' in the late 1970s, was asked to write an article about "printmaking in Provincetown", but by that time many of the artists were no longer alive. Through research with Myron Stout and meeting with some surviving members, like Ferol Sibley Warthen, he learned the history about the Provincetown Print and later learned how to create works of art with the technique. Since then, he has promoted the white line woodcut technique in his historical research paper "Provincetown Printers: Genesis of a Unique Woodcut Tradition", taught and lectured about the technique, and has created and shown his version of the Provincetown Prints in exhibits. An exhibit of 75 works of art from this group was held at the

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

from September 9, 1983 to January 8, 1984.

References

External links

How to make a Provincetown Print
(video) {{American woodblock printers 20th century in art 20th century in Massachusetts Art in Massachusetts Artist colonies History of Barnstable County, Massachusetts Provincetown, Massachusetts Woodcut designers

See also

References

External links