Harden Hollow

Gustave Baumann

By 1927 Baumann had been living in Santa Fe for nearly a decade and considered it his permanent home. Now married, to opera singer and actress Jane Devereaux, the couple was happily awaiting the birth of their daughter Ann and Gustave didn't want to travel too far from home. For fresh artistic inspiration he referred to old sketches of his former home, the place where he got his true start as a color woodcut artist in his own right: Brown County, Indiana.

On page 334 of In a Modern Rendering: The Color Woodcuts of Gustave Baumann, Chamberlain quotes Baumann: "For years past Brown County has been known as the place where the people are queer but in one respect this county is not unlike the Divine Comedy. We have all heard of it but really know little of it--Its people live in their little world bounded by the hills, over which the sound of the distant railroad is carried occasionally but within traffic is still carried on by wagon."

This impression is from the second edition that he printed about a decade later. Changes included the brightening of the color palette, and adding a skyline with the use of negative space in the upper left corner.