Venetian Sail Boat (aka: Canal in Venice)

William Seltzer Rice

Like many artists of the time Rice used the still relatively new medium of photography when he was unable to spend time sketching or doing a watercolor. This early color woodcut by W.S. Rice was done from a photograph he took in Venice, Italy in the summer of 1913.

In the 2013 book by his granddaughter Ellen Treseder Sexauer "William S. Rice - Art & Life" there are illustrations on page 113 of a photograph of this composition, the same photograph with hand coloring and another impression of this woodcut. The image of the woodcut is reversed from the photos and the coloring and title of the illustration are different. Since each print was individually printed by Rice he would often refer to Arthur Dow and experiment with different colors. In this sense many of his woodcuts are uneditioned monoprints.