Long Bay, Keewatin

Walter J. Phillips's striking color woodcut Long Bay, Keewatin presents a sweeping vista in Canada's Lake of the Woods region, near the borders of Ontario, Manitoba, and Minnesota. A lichen-covered boulder and a hardy plant command the foreground beneath golden clouds and a subtly tinted sky. Beyond them, a sliver of deep blue bay appears before the cool-colored vegetation on the distant shore. This impression, one of an edition of fifty, reveals the artist's love for Canada's natural scenery and his virtuosity in color woodcut printmaking in the Japanese manner. Phillips's indebtedness to Japanese prints is particularly evident in this print's asymmetrical composition and subtly graduated tones of the sky, features seen in the prints of other artists working in the Asian printmaking tradition, as demonstrated by Frank Morley Fletcher's Ojai Valley (TF 1996.18) and the prints of Bertha Lum (Frost (TF 1996.37), Mother West Wind (TF 1996.38).

Between 1914 and 1929, Phillips and his family spent their summers at Lake of Woods, a popular resort area some one hundred miles from their home in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The flat, wooded scenery of the region and his family's boating activities on the lake provided subjects for several color prints. This landscape was taken from the small lakeshore town of Keewatin (now incorporated into Kenora), Ontario.

Le Japonisme en Amérique: oeuvres sur papier, 1880–1930 (Japonisme in America: Works on Paper, 1880–1930), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, September 15–November 30, 2002.