Poplar Trees and Telegraph Poles (trial proof 3 of 5) in sepia

Ursula Fookes

ca. 1930 · Color linocut · Drawings and Prints

Fookes’s Poplar Trees and Telegraph Poles features a row of wooden utility poles that mirror in form and orientation a line of poplar trees across the road, creating a new kind of allée that reflected the alteration of the natural landscape by contemporary technologies. Stringing the poles together are two parallel rows of wires that extend beyond the horizon and edge of the paper. Like her print Mining Town, No. 2 (MMA 2019.592.118), this work illustrates the impact of those technologies that accompanied recently developed environments. Numerous artists and writers noted the ubiquity of new modes of communication, such as those signaled here, with telephones, telegraphs, and the infrastructure that supported them appearing in a wide variety of works.

Artist

Ursula Fookes

Date

ca. 1930

Medium

Color linocut

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Purchase, Leslie and Johanna Garfield Gift, Lila Acheson Wallace, Charles and Jessie Price, and David T Schiff Gifts, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, Dolores Valvidia Hurlburt Bequest, Peco Foundation and Friends of Drawings and Prints Gifts, and funds from various donors, 2019