Grace Martin Taylor - Editions & Works on Paper New York Tuesday, October 24, 2023 | Phillips

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  • “Control must begin only after creation.”
    —Grace Martin Frame Taylor
    Grace Martin Frame Taylor learned the artistry of the white-line woodcut through her older cousin and founding Pronvincetown Printer Blanche Lazzell, who likely first instructed Taylor in 1925 while visiting her brother in her native Morgantown, West Virginia, where Taylor also resided.1 Lazzell, twenty-five years Taylor’s senior, functioned as a teacher and mentor to her younger relative throughout her life, encouraging Taylor to pursue her development as a similarly-minded modern artist.

     

    Studio Window is a complex print that combines a floral still life with the artist’s view of the Morgantown glass factory from her studio window. The perspective is distinctly Cubist-inspired, holding a large-scale pitcher-turned-vase in the interior foreground on the same plane as the distant scenery framed by her windowpanes. Taylor adeptly contrasts the wild assortment of flowers with the orderly row of houses visible out her window, introducing visual movement throughout - in the circular mat below the vase, the swirling strokes of the flower stems, and the structured lines of the windowsill and surrounding interior room. The occasional unfinished flower or building emphasizes the modernity of Taylor’s printmaking process and the painterly technique used in the work’s creation. Studio Window represents Taylor’s expertise in rendering intricate compositions, bringing intellectual order to imaginative impulses.

     

     

    1 Robert Bridges, Studio Window: The Prints of Grace Martin Taylor, 2016, p. 14

    • Provenance

      The Brown Shop, Pasadena, California (partial label center right sheet edge)

    • Exhibited

      8th Modern Exhibition, Provincetown Art Association, 1932
      50 Best Color Prints in USA & Canada, Printmakers Club of California, 1933
      Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1940
      Artists for Victory, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1942-43

    • Literature

      Robert Bridges 18

Property from a Distinguished Maryland Estate

17

Studio Window (B. 18)

1932
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 1/4 in. (40 x 46.4 cm)

Signed 'Grace Martin Frame', titled and dated '1933' in pencil, additionally numbered '20' in pencil at the lower right and left center sheet edges, framed.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$6,000 - 9,000 

Sold for $6,350

Contact Specialist

Editions@phillips.com
212 940 1220
 

Editions & Works on Paper

New York Auction 24-26 October 2023