While living in Paris from 1912 to 1913, Blanche Lazzell would have been keenly aware of Henri Matisse and the Fauve-inspired modernism, generated by the liberation of color, practiced by the artist and his followers. Like others who flocked from Europe to Provincetown at the outbreak of World War I, Lazzell brought her modernist inspiration with her to the tip of Cape Cod. Her particular adaptation to the white-line woodcut methodology that came to define the Provincetown Print enabled her to produce impressions of varying colors and intensities, resulting in designs that share a commonality with Matisse and his own experimentations with color and form. The Red Quill is an exceptional reflection of the aesthetics Lazzell absorbed in France: the intricate pattern of the tablecloth, multitude of unnaturalistic colors, and utilization of a flattened perspective transform the still life composition into a cacophony of shape, color, and line similar to that of Matisse’s own 1908 painting The Dessert: Harmony in Red (The Red Room), both exhibiting triumphs of pattern and decoration.