During the winter of 1915-1916, a group of printmakers, many of whom had recently returned to the United State from Europe following the outbreak of World War I, decided to stay in the small fishing village of Provincetown, Massachusetts for the season. Building a sense of camaraderie and community, they braved the harsh New England winter to focus upon their artistic pursuits in woodblock printing. That winter, the white-line woodcut, otherwise known as the “Provincetown Print” was said to be born; the invention allowed the printer to see the entire composition on a singular piece of wood and afforded endless possibilities for texture, color and shading by using watercolor as ink. The technique was quickly be taken up by the majority of the area’s printmakers, and as such, the distinctive aesthetic of the Provincetown art colony became firmly established. 

Among these printmakers who would come to make up the group now known as the Provincetown Printers including Ada Gilmore, Mildred McMillen, Ethel Mars, and Maud Squire was Juliette Nichols, who met these and other members of the eventual group on a trip to Paris in the early 1900s. Soon after the breakthrough of the white-line woodcut, Nichols exhibited across the northeast at numerous galleries, art clubs and associations, including the first show of the Provincetown Printers at the Berlin Photographic Company in New York City and the first two exhibitions held at the Provincetown Art Association. Following her stint in Provincetown, Nichols relocated back to Paris to work and study, then to New York before returning home to her native Marietta, Ohio. 

Nichols was, above all, an experimenter. Her penchant for classic, vibrantly hued scenes of bathers, landscapes, seascapes and more encapsulate the forward-thinking and innovative approach of the Provincetown Printmakers as trailblazers of modernism. In this sale, Phillips is proud to present the largest group of Nichols’ works to ever come to auction, offering 33 total impressions of 15 woodcuts and white-line woodcuts, along with two works on paper. Through these artworks the spirit of the Provincetown Printmakers comes to life, demonstrating the radical nature of their process through varied impressions of the same composition, the use of collage and hand-coloring, and a palette that rivals that of Matisse and the Fauvists.