The Big Sky, or Marshes

Arthur Wesley Dow

ca. 1912 · Color woodcut · Drawings and Prints

These woodcuts communicate Dow’s advanced ideas about expressive color. In 1889 the artist returned to Boston after five years in France, and became fascinated by Japanese ukiyo-e prints at the Museum of Fine Arts. Pursuing a new artistic path, he mastered a multiblock technique and then created forty woodcuts between 1891 and 1921, often printing multiple color variations with experimental inking techniques. Big Sky, or Marshes followed his 1912 trip to Arizona and California; some of the tiny, expansive landscapes set beneath dramatic skies evoke the desert hues of the American West and others suggest the salt marshes of Dow’s native Ipswich, Massachusetts.

Artist

Arthur Wesley Dow

Date

ca. 1912

Medium

Color woodcut

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Gift of the Dowd-Gallogly Family and Allan E. Dowd, 2016