Court House Yard

 

Gustave Baumann

  1881 - 1971 (biography)

1910 /1914 

color woodcut 

9 1/16 x 13 1/8" image 

pencil, lower right 

100 impressions; this is numbered 45 in the center of the lower margin 

titled, lower left; dated 14 after signature 

Chamberlain 28; No. 12 from In the Hills of Brown 

laid Japanese 

 

 

AB3062 

SOLD

"Courthouse Square" is an image included in Gustave Baumann's portfolio he titled "In The Hills o' Brown," a portfolio of 12 color woodcuts depicting life in and around Nashville, Indiana. The portfolio was begun by Baumann in 1910 and he continued to print impressions until at least 1914. It is doubtful that he printed the full edition of 100 he had originally anticipated. Baumann rented rooms above Charley Genolin's drug store, which was one of a continuous row of buildings that faced the courthouse in Nashville, Indiana. His new studio had a little window from which Baumann could look out on the courthouse yard and watch daily life unfold. It was a place where Dick Moberly, the retired town barber, dreamed up a hair tonic formula and the artist Will Vawter would adroitly spin a yarn or two. Decades after moving to the American Southwest, Baumann wrote this about Nashville:"I’ve seen other places since then but never so human in a simple way. For all I know there may have been a lot of bickering and backbiting to fill the urgent need for time consuming gossip. That is what the benches in the Courthouse yard were for and you had to come early to find a seat."