Above the Old Bridge, Ipswich, or Little Venice
ca. 1893–95
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
Color woodcut
Dimensions
image: 5 x 2 1/4 in. (12.7 x 5.7 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Mrs. W. L. Putnam, 1942
Accession Number
42.54.2
Tags
Art Historical Context
Arthur Wesley Dow's *Above the Old Bridge,, or Little Venice*ca. 1893–95) captures a serene riverside scene in Ipswich, Massachusetts, evoking the charm of a quaint "Little Venice" with its clustered houses and overhanging trees. This intimate color woodcut, measuring just 5 x 2¼ inches, showcases Dow's early mastery of the medium, a technique he championed after studying Japanese prints during his travels in the 1880s and 1890s. As pioneering American artist and educator, Dow bridged Eastern and Western traditions, introducing ukiyo-e-inspired woodblock printing to the U.S. through his Pratt...
About the Artist
Arthur Wesley Dow · 1857–1922
Arthur Wesley Dow (1857–1922) was an American artist, printmaker, and educator whose ideas about composition and design exerted an outsized influence on American modernism, reaching well beyond anything his own paintings and prints might have achieved on their own. Born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, he studied in Boston and then in Paris at the Académie Julian, where he absorbed the academic training...