Tropic Beach Sutro Baths

Joseph Morris Raphael

Joseph Raphael used graphic, black and white images for his early woodcuts. At some point in the 1930s, he learned the white-line technique to create color woodcuts, possibly from Cora Boone or W.S. Rice and began utilizing it in a very expressionist way, painting directly on the block and adding watercolor highlights by hand. Each impression will vary in color. Raphael's color woodcuts are very scarce.

In this impression of "Tropic Beach, Sutro Baths" he leaves large areas of negative white space accentuated with individual figures, cars and architectural elements. The color is subtle creating an equalibrium to the whole composition. The texts on the signs had to be carved backward in order to read properly after printing. In the distance can be seen the hills of Marin County as the fog begins to roll in off the Pacific.

The Sutro Baths, built in 1894, was a privately owned public saltwater pool complex in the Lands End Area in western San Francisco. It was located north of Ocean Beach, the Cliff House, and Seal Rocks, and west of Sutro Heights Park. The entrance to the baths was the "Tropic Beach" structure with lighting designed by Leonard A. Hobbs. Thirty-seven thousand watts of electrical power lit the new entrance. Its modernistic architecture was an outgrowth of the 1933 Chicago Worlds Fair, marking a "Century of Progress."