Blanche Lazzell - Editions & Works on Paper New York Tuesday, October 24, 2023 | Phillips
  • “Originality, Simplicity, Freedom of Expression, and above all Sincerity, with a clean-cut block, are characteristics of a good wood block print.”
    —Blanche Lazzell
    Though many of her fellow Provincetown Printers eventually left the area for other artistic pursuits, Blanche Lazzell remained a stronghold of the village’s printmaking community, spending almost every summer and many winters in Provincetown for more than forty years, during which she carved over 138 blocks and created over 550 white-line woodcut impressions, between 1916 and 1956.1 In her quaint wharf studio, decorated with flowers and vines, she continued to entertain visitors, display her work, and demonstrate the techniques of the white-line woodcut process. Her private lessons on the method would attract numerous students, many of whom would work in the medium throughout their careers. Through Lazzell, the white-line woodcut continued to be passed down from generation to generation as artists and tourists alike passed through Provincetown. It was in her little seaside studio, overlooking scenes such as this, that almost singlehandedly Lazzell championed the white-line woodcut technique past the glory days of the Provincetown Printers, aiding in its legacy as an inventive form of American modernism.

     

     

    1 Barbara Stern Shapiro, Blanche Lazzell and the Color Woodcut, p. 20

    • Literature

      John Clarkson block 79
      Barbara Stern Shapiro, Blanche Lazzell and the Color Woodcut, 2002, cat. no. 56, p. 45

Property from a Distinguished Maryland Estate

14

Sail Boat (C. bl. 79)

1931
White-line woodcut in colors, on wove paper, with margins.
I. 12 x 14 in. (30.5 x 35.6 cm)
S. 15 3/4 x 18 1/8 in. (40 x 46 cm)

Signed, titled and dated in pencil, additionally numbered 298/2 four times and annotated 'Blanche Lazzell Morgantown WVa, April 20, 1931 298/2 Number from all blocks/Number from this block, 'Sail Boat'' in pencil on the reverse, Clarkson records 8 impressions based on the artist's record book, framed.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$20,000 - 40,000 

Sold for $38,100

Contact Specialist

Editions@phillips.com
212 940 1220
 

Editions & Works on Paper

New York Auction 24-26 October 2023