Plum and Peach Bloom

Gustave Baumann

"Plum and Peach Bloom" was one of five oversize color woodcuts that Baumann made during his stay in Nashville, Indiana. Color woodcuts of this size were rare, owing to the difficulty of finding consistent grain in the wood, of cutting, and of registration as the blocks would not fit in a press and needed to be hand-rubbed. Baumann appears to have been the only color woodcut artist of the time to attempt such a feat, and with success.

His hope was to decorate the walls of local schoolhouses with his color woodcuts but Brown County could not afford the products of his studio. Baumann was an avid photographer, often using his shots as direct references for his woodcuts, and in the Baumann Archive is a photograph of the two children carrying a bucket.

This impression, which was used in the catalogue raisonne, In a Modern Rendering: The Color Woodcuts of Gustave Baumann, is from later in the edition when he recut the green block and altered the inks somewhat, allowing for a softer glow in the blossoms and sky.