Winter Stillness

Eva Auld Watson

Eva Auld Watson and her husband, Ernest Watson worked in the relief method of linocut. A linocut prints like a woodcut but there is no wood-grain to deal with when carving or printing. Using an oil base ink this artist uses a a split fountain technique with a couple of blocks to achieve the blending of the colors within the composition.

Watson studied with M. O. Leiser at the Pittsburg School of Design and later with Ernest W. Watson at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, whom she married in 1911. The Watsons spent summers in the Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts and in 1915 Ernest co-founded the Berkshire Summer School of Art in Monterey, Massachusetts. Their summer home in Greywold, Monterey, Mass. became their studio where they printed and sold their block prints.

The artist captures a moment, two deer in a winter landscape, the tree boughs hanging heavy with snow. The deer seems to sense a presence, with its ears standing erect, ready to act.