Lily

Art Historical Context

Arthur Wesley Dow's *Lily* (1898) is a delicate color woodcut, capturing the elegant form of a single lily in an intimate vertical composition. Measuring just 8 3/4 × 2 5/16 inches, this first proof from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's American Wing showcases Dow's mastery of printmaking, with its subtle layering of colors achieved through multiple woodblocks—a technique inspired by Japanese ukiyo-e masters. Dow, a pioneering American artist and educator, bridged Eastern and Western aesthetics during the height of Japonisme in the late 19th century. Influenced by his travels to Japan, he championed simplified forms, harmonious color, and decorative flatness over realistic representation, teaching these principles to students like Georgia O'Keeffe. As a first proof, *Lily* offers a rare glimpse into his experimental process, where subtle color variations and crisp lines highlight the flower's graceful curves against a textured background. This work exemplifies the American adaptation of Asian print traditions, reflecting a cultural exchange that enriched U.S. art during the Arts and Crafts era. Acquired through The Morse Family Foundation Fund in 2016, it invites visitors to appreciate the quiet beauty of nature rendered with precision and poetry.

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...