The Blockmaker

About this artwork

This painting of a craftsman in his studio was one of many images of elderly, independent artisans at work that flourished on the American art market in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Blockmakers specialized in making pulley blocks for ships, and several oval-shaped wooden blocks appear on the worktable. As factory work grew in the United States, such images captured a concern among many Americans that the handworkers and their trades were growing obsolete. These once cherished arti...

Art Historical Context

In Edgar Melville Ward's *The Blockmaker*, an elderly craftsman labors intently in his modest studio, surrounded by the tools of his vanishing trade. Painted in the late nineteenth century and now housed in the Smithsonian American Museum (gift of William T.), this evocative genre scene captures a full-length figure seated on a stool before a worktable cluttered with oval-shaped wooden pulley blocks, an axe, lathe, and other woodworking essentials. Ward's detailed rendering highlights the artisan's focused solitude, evoking a sense quiet dignity amid stacks of timber in what appears to be a st...