1926 Blanche Lazzell "Petunias" Monoprint
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GUEST:
We found a painting in the bottom of a cedar closet. I inherited a house and its contents from an elderly gentleman about three years ago. It's a Blanche Lazzell and that's all that I know about it.
APPRAISER:
You're exactly right. The signature of the artist is right there, Blanche Lazzell, and it's also dated 1926. Blanche Lazzell is a Provincetown artist. She worked with several artists who had fled World War I. This collective of artists included women and men and many of them were studying Japanese woodblock prints, and the method that they innovated was white-line woodblock printing. And that method involved printing that left white outlines around the image area, and that's one of the things that she's best known for. What you have here today is a little bit different. This is a monoprint.And a monoprint is something that straddles the medium between painting and print. And it is done by taking a surface like glass and then the artist will paint on it freehand and then take the paper and press it against the surface. It's a unique image, usually. And that's why it looks so painterly where you can see the artist's brushstrokes. So it looks and feels much more like the artist's hand than perhaps a woodblock print would, which can be inked several times and several images can be made of the same thing. So chances are this is the only one of its kind. But because it is pressed against a surface, that's why we use the word "print." "Mono" being one or singular.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
In the auction market, I would probably estimate it to bring between $6,000 and $10,000.
GUEST:
Wow! Not so ugly now. My husband said it was ugly. (laughs)
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