Low Tide
Tod Lindenmuth (1885-1956), Low Tide, color woodcut, c. 1915, signed and titled in pencil lower margin. In very good condition, with wide margins (some flattened creases in margins, small area of thinning upper left margin edge, a few prior hinges attached to margin edges, only the slightest hint of light tone); on a Japan wove paper, 14 7/8 x 14, the sheet 21 x 17 3/4 inches, archival mounting with window mat.
A fine impression of this rare Provincetown woodcut, made from three blocks in light, medium and dark blue.
Although Lindemuth himself titled this Low Tide, there appears to be some confusion about this title. In her classic volume American Prints and Printmakers Una Johnson refers to another Lindemuth color woodcut (pictured on page 15) as Low Tide. (We believe this may in fact be The Runway, as titled in another impression by Lindenmuth.)
We do not know the edition sizes of the Lindenmuth prints, but believe they are small; they are rarely encountered on the market today.
In the extensive archives on Lindenmuth in the Archives of American Art (Smithsonian Institute), his daughter, in an interview, points out the Provincetown piers and fishing runways Lindenmuth depicted in his color woodcuts. These prints were important to Lindenmuth, who regarded the color print as a “small painting.”
These woodcuts were important as well to the group of American artists (including the Zorachs, Max Weber, BJO Nordfeldt) who were influenced by European Modernism and Japonisme (quite evident in Low Tide), and who made woodcuts along with Lindenmuth in Provincetown in the 1915-1925 period; these were in many respects the beginnings of American Modernism.