Seaside Landscape

The unbridled U.S. industrialization at the turn of the 20th century spurred nostalgia for rural life. That may have motivated this landscape by Elizabeth Colwell. She was born in rural Michigan but lived in Chicago, then the country’s second biggest city. There she met B. J. O. Nordfeldt, whose work hangs nearby. He taught Colwell to cut, ink, and print her own woodblocks—a novel practice for a midwestern woman in the 1910s. The elevated viewpoint and the patterning in the avocado-green fields show her interest in Japanese design elements.