Library finds Grace Martin Taylor print
“Studio Window,” Grace Martin Taylor, c. 1933, property of the Kanawha County Public Library
Reprinted from the March 30, 2008 Sunday Gazette-Mail
By Bob Schwarz
Lucie Mellert just knew the Kanawha County Public Library had one of her mother’s white-line color woodblock prints. After Grace Martin Taylor died in 1995, Mellert, the artist’s daughter, kept telling the library people that they had the piece somewhere. The library people couldn’t turn it up.
But early last year, the library people found the print and other artwork and hung them in a hallway on the closed-to-the-public fifth floor, said Alan Engelbert, the library’s new director, who had not arrived when the discoveries were made.
The library people called in West Virginia University’s John Cuthbert, author of “Early Art & Artists in West Virginia,” to look at the art, report on the condition and estimate the value of each piece.
The most important work was Taylor’s “Studio Window,” which the Printmakers Society of California chose as one of the top 50 prints of the year in 1933.
The print is faded by light - watercolors are susceptible to fading - and damaged by the acidic backing that was then common, Cuthbert said. “But it’s a particularly desirable print and the fact that it won an award makes it all the more notable. That adds to its provenance.”
Cuthbert hasn’t yet placed a monetary value on any of the art.
Taylor is best known for her woodblock prints, pioneered by her distant and older cousin Blanche Lazzell, who was one of the earliest Provincetown printmakers. Taylor lived her life in Charleston, but, encouraged by Lazzell, spent many summers in Provincetown, Mass. When the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, mounted a large exhibit of Lazzell woodblock prints a few years ago, the curators included a few Taylor woodblock prints as well.
As she grew older, Taylor stopped going to Provincetown. By the time she died in her 90s, she had outlived her small degree of fame. The Boston show changed all that, as did Mellert’s unremitting campaign to revive her mother’s reputation and The Art Store’s willingness to take on the estate and promote the artist’s work.
The woodblock prints are almost like one-of-a-kind watercolor paintings. Sometimes only a single print was made, and often just two or three or four, but each print was separately made and the colors on each are unique. In the 1980s, an aging Taylor took out the old blocks and with Mellert’s help, made new prints, which The Art Store sells for $8,000. The old prints from the 1920s and 1930s fetch much higher prices when one comes on the market. Most are in private hands and some are in museums.
“Composition No. 1,” Grace Martin Taylor, c. 1930, courtesy of the British Museum
Cindy Miller, now in charge of the library’s marketing and development but formerly in charge of public relations, said the print and some other art were out of sight when Mellert first called her in the mid-1990s. Miller looked all over the library and found nothing. The art had gone into a storage room, where people forgot it, she surmises.
Former library director Nick Winowich recalls the Taylor print hanging in the first-floor office beside the reference desk. Winowich, who retired in 1986 after 30 years in the top position, doesn’t think the library had the print when he arrived in 1956. He speculates that the library bought it or received it as a gift, but those are just possible scenarios. He can’t remember any specifics.
According to Mellert, “Studio Window” was exhibited in California when it earned recognition there, then exhibited here when it came back. “She evidently took it to the library to exhibit. She wrote a note to the effect that she had taken it to the library to be exhibited there.”
Mellert said her mother left no record as to whether she gave the print to the library or lent it.
The framed print has some words below the image, indicating that it was a gift to the library from the American Color Print Society, which didn’t come into being until 1939.
Cuthbert said it’s not for him to tell the library people what to do with their art. “But they should look at each one individually,” he said. “And the Taylor piece shouldn’t be under fluorescent light 24 hours a day.”
“We’re still in the stage of determining what we have,” Engelbert said. “No decisions have been made whatever in terms of retaining it, hanging, selling it or any of those things. The discussion really hasn’t begun.”
Mellert said she hopes library officials will consult her about the work’s future.
The Art Store will include a 1980s “Studio Window” in the show “Grace Martin Taylor, Selina Trieff, Blanche Lazzell: Students of Hans Hofmann,” which opens Saturday and runs through April 26. The Art Store has had prior exhibits devoted exclusively to Taylor in 2002 and 2006. There will be an opening reception from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
The Art Store show will also include a 1980s print of “Composition No. 1,” a 1930 print of which will be part of the exhibit “The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock,” opening at the British Museum in London on April 10 and running through Sept. 7. All the prints in the British Museum’s exhibit comes from that museum’s collection. That exhibit will tour regional museums in the United Kingdom next year.
To contact staff writer Bob Schwarz, use e-mail or call 348-1249.
