Old Horse

Ethel Mars

A rare, small early color woodcut, probably done in Paris around 1907, by American printmaker Ethel Mars when she was living in France with her partner, artist Maud Hunt Squire. The two artists moved to Europe in 1900 to work and study, settling in Paris where they became a part of Gertrude Stein's circle of luminaries. Both women learned the color woodcut technique in Munich in 1904, and Mars exhibited her woodcuts in New York that same year.

Mars taught woodcut to other American artists and became an important element in the founding of the Provincetown Printmakers in 1915 on Cape Cod where they developed the one block, white-line method of printing, often referred to as the "Provincetown" method.

Interestingly, "Old Horse" shows elements of what would become the white line woodcut technique. Using a small format, Mars has struck the balance between retaining fine details and minimizing clutter through the use of uninked negative space. In this sweet composition she has chosen an otherwise unremarkable scene, incidentally capturing a notable pre-World War I element of daily life in the city: a horse and cart resting beside an apartment building on a cobblestone street; between the horse and its burden a terracotta pot holding pink flowers rests on a windowsill.

This early Modernist image is printed on a delicate Japanese paper and has been attached to another, heavier sheet of cream paper by glue in the four corners, and signed on the support sheet by Mars.