Fog Bound

Tod Lindenmuth's linocut print Fog Bound is an image of two figures in a rowboat engulfed in fog on a motionless sea. Looming quietly in the background are two sailboats, flattened to ghostly silhouettes in the thick ocean mist by means of the artist's skillful manipulation of pale blue-gray tones. Lindenmuth was particularly adept at suggesting sunlight filtering through the fog: here, the brightest highlights trace the rim of the row boat and the top of the oar. The contrasting sizes of the figures in the rowboat suggest a man and a child—perhaps a father and son, and they pull away from the moored sailboats as if abandoning the day's fishing with the rising fog. Any such narrative is secondary, however, to the haunting beauty of a scene transformed by the combined effects of strong light and dense fog. Lindenmuth drew such maritime subjects from his stays in the fishing community of Provincetown, Massachusetts, home of an artists' colony where color printmaking flourished.

Lindenmuth was one of numerous early twentieth-century American artists inspired by the techniques of Japanese prints, including the use of silhouetting and subtle colors, as seen here and in another marine view, his In Harbor (TF 1996.36). Many artists used the more easily cut linoleum blocks, rather than wood, to crisply articulate forms in bright colors. Lindenmuth, in contrast, excelled in gradations of muted colors, used in Fog Bound to evoke the forms of boats floating on the barely rippling water in a murky atmosphere.  

Ships at Sea: Sailing Through Summer, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, June 6–August 26, 2001.