Cedar Grand Canyon

 

Gustave Baumann

  1881 - 1971 (biography)

1919  

color woodcut 

13 x 13" image 

unsigned 

unnumberd proof 

 

GB42 

cream Zanders laid paper with the Hand-in-Heart watermark 

 

 

AB3004 

SOLD

Cedar Grand Canyon was the first of Baumann's woodcuts depicting the Grand Canyon. For in depth explanations of the variant titles and different editions see Chamberlain 77. This is an unsigned, variant color proof from the Baumann estate and is it witness to his constant exploration of color. The color varies from those impressions signed and numbered from the final edition. Here, Baumann printed his block with green ochre, rather than orange ochre, which colored the diagonal bank of clouds in the upper right, the unlit trunks and limbs of the cedar, and the single dotted border. Baumann wrote about the hazards facing an artist standing before the Grand Canyon: I was sitting back of a rock screened by an old windblown Cedar from where only yesterday I had seen the composition for my masterpiece that was to the sum total of pictures of the grandest of all Canyons. The forms in the picture had haunted me all night so that I could hardly wait until morning to get to work. It is reasonably simple to approximate size and space dimensions, what I had not counted on was what the atmosphere contributed in space. The Canyon was there as always but the thing that made my picture had vanished completely. There is a subtle difference between scenery and landscape. What I saw held no interest whatever – a fleeting moment of time may come again when something more than a soft cuff is available to fix it in or there should be a fence around the canyon with a large sign: ARTISTS KEEP OUT THIS AREA BEWITCHED.