(Still life: white peonies in blue pitcher)

Cora May Boone

A profusion of vivid blues and greens enlivens this watercolor of white peonies in a vase, the composition at once bold, modern, and soft. A departure from the more carefully planned watercolor still lifes of Cora Boone’s oeuvre, this has the urgent feel of a sketch, succeeding in capturing the fleeting beauty of a blossom known for its brief lifespan.

This was created around the time that Boone was introduced to the whiteline woodcut technique by artist Blanche Lazzell. This may have influenced her approach to a composition’s structure: where she had once been influenced by the detailed, overlapping nature of Impressionist compositions, the boldly graphic whiteline woodcut required a kind of stripping-away of fine detail to present the key elements of the image. This image is balanced between the two sensibilities.