(Still life with Magnolia flower)

 

Cora May Boone

  1871 - 1953 (biography)

c. 1920  

watercolor 

14 1/4 x 11 1/8" image and paper 

"C Boone" in pigment, lower right 

1 of 1 unique 

 

illustrated in St. Gaudens/Schiffer, Emerging from the Shadows, Vol. I pg. 82 

watercolor paper supported on board 

 

 

18559 

$900.00 

Cora Boone approached this composition like it may have been a design for a future white-line woodcut, separating the areas of color with heavy black lines, like a stained glass window. Had this been done on a block the black lines would have been cut away, leaving the uncut areas separated from each other, ready to be colored using brush.

A profusion of vivid blues and greens enlivens this watercolor of white Magnolia in a vase, the composition at once bold, modern, and soft. A departure from the more carefully planned watercolor still lifes of Cora Boone’s oeuvre, this has the urgent feel of a sketch, succeeding in capturing the fleeting beauty of a blossom known for its brief lifespan.The vase of magnolias pushes the limits of the composition, extending to or beyond the edges, adding to the simple drama of the work.

This was created around the time that Boone was introduced to the whiteline woodcut technique by artist Blanche Lazzell. This may have influenced her approach to a composition’s structure: where she had once been influenced by the detailed, overlapping nature of Impressionist compositions, the boldly graphic whiteline woodcut required a kind of stripping-away of fine detail to present the key elements of the image. This image is balanced between the two sensibilities.

Cora May Boone, teacher, watercolorist, enamellist, and printmaker, was born in St. Louis, Missouri to James O. Boone and Sarah Elizabeth (Simms) Boone on 18 November 1865. The Boone family tree proves her to be a direct descendant of the American pioneer Daniel Boone. The Boone family moved to California in 1870 settling in the community of Contra Costa near San Francisco. In the 1890s Boone studied at the Mark Hopkins Institute in San Francisco.

Between July 1892 and June 1893, Boone served as a long-term substitute teacher in the Oakland Public Schools. She continued her studies at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London between 1912 and 1913, and then went to Paris where she studied with Jeka Kemp 1913.

Boone returned to California and was hired full time in August 1913 by in the Oakland Public Schools, a position she held until she retired in 1935. During her teaching career in Oakland she served as Supervisor of Art in the Secondary Schools. She also taught art in public schools in Danville and Benicia, California and was a member of the faculty of the University of California Berkeley for the summer of 1917.

About 1920, Blanche Lazzell taught Boone the techniques of the white-line woodcut, also known as the Provincetown technique or the one-block woodcut. Boone's imagery included florals and figures and were highly decorative. She taught white-line color woodcut technique to other art teachers, including California printmaker William S. Rice who also excelled in the technique.