BOOK REVIEW — In a Modern Rendering

Cover of In a Modern Rendering, the Color Woodcuts of Gustave Baumann: A Catalogue Raisonné

In a Modern Rendering, the Color Woodcuts of Gustave Baumann: A Catalogue Raisonné by Gala Chamberlain

A Book Review by Alan “Mac” Watson

With the appearance of Gala Chamberlain’s monumental In a Modern Rendering, the Color Woodcuts of Gustave Baumann: A Catalogue Raisonné (Rizzoli Electra, 2019), Santa Fe’s beloved Gustave Baumann becomes established as an artist of international stature.  This is a wonderful work of scholarship, presenting not only an authoritative catalogue of the 190 known editions of Baumann artistic color woodcuts but also an additional 200 pieces of “ephemera and undated color woodcuts,” plus an additional 35 pieces described by Chamberlain as “problematic pieces”—linear blocks, each of which expresses the entire image of an existing color woodcut.

The Catalogue is prefaced by a formidable essay of critical biography by Nancy Green of Cornell University, the carefully documented facts of Baumann’s life—his lifelong development from a meticulous craftsman to an artist of brilliant vision and technique.

Master printer, Baumann afficionado, and Director of the Press at the Palace of the Governors Tom Leech has contributed an essay of fascinating insights into Baumann’s printing methods, his materials of wood, inks and paper, and his tools for carving blocks and making successive impressions where each color requires a separately carved block.

And Chamberlain herself has contributed a further essay on Baumann’s “Studio Practices,” presenting an account of the varieties of paper he used over the decades, his “chops” (seals, signatures and symbols  that he used in signing his work), and the problems of dating the discreet editions he issued of the colored woodblock prints.

The Catalogue was initiated by Ann Baumann, daughter of Gustave and Jane, who inherited the Baumann estate which includes extensive archival material—personal letters, manuscripts, scrapbooks, and records of Gustave’s paintings, records of sales, catalogues, consignments and exhibitions—all of which Chamberlain draws upon to compile the Catalogue.  Chamberlain’s meticulous scholarship over the past three decades is apparent on every page of this impressive book.

Weighing in at roughly eight pounds (629 pages), this is not a book to curl up with on a winter’s evening! The publication was undertaken with the highest standards of bookmaking in mind, designed in the tradition of fine Baumann craftsmanship by Leslie Fitch and David Skolkin and published by Rizzoli, known internationally for its surpassing works of pictorial art.

Many of the full-page illustrations in the Catalogue have been photographed by the Museum of New Mexico’s excellent Blair Clark. Nonetheless, they must fall short of the actual woodcuts printed by the artist himself. As Tom Leech’s essay so gracefully observes: “I encourage you, when looking at a Baumann woodcut, also to look into it, to discern one layer from another…you will find different degrees of impression and thickness of ink. Keep in mind that, even though the reproductions in this book are of the highest quality, they are essentially two-dimensional representations of a three-dimensional art.”

By Gala Chamberlain
With essays by Nancy E. Green, Thomas Leech
Foreword by Martin F. Krause
Rizzoli Electa
Hardcover, 648 pages
$175.00

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Gala Chamberlain is the trustee of the Ann Baumann Trust and director of the Annex Galleries, Santa Rosa, California.

Nancy E. Green is the Gale and Ira Drukier Curator of European and American Art, Prints, and Drawings, 1800-1945 at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University.

Thomas Leech is director of the press at the Palace of the Governors and a curator at the New Mexico History Museum, Santa Fe.