My Print's Background:
Conor snagged this print at an auction in 2007.
The print is extremely dark in the lower third where the grass should be, This would appear to be from two much ink at the time of printing perhaps. When Conor got this print we didn't know what it was, we just loved the look.After some research we found it to be a woodcut of J.J. Lankes a friend and collaborator of Robert Frost from the turn of the century. Here is the backround we found:
It is a woodcut of J J Lankes but it apears that it was not printed by him, but rather a modern printer in New York named :
Lankes Bio:
hundred, helped elevate woodblock prints beyond illustrations in commercial productions to recognition as a fine art. Lankes graduated from the Buffalo Commercial and Electro-Mechanical Institute in 1902 and worked as a draftsman specializing in patent drawings before continuing his art studies at the Art Students' League of Buffalo and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School. Unsuccessful in painting, Lankes turned his attention to woodblock printing and recorded his first woodcut in 1917. His skill was recognized early. Bolton Brown, a respected lithographer, published a pamphlet on Lankes's work in 1921 and the following year Wilbur Macey Stone's book on Lankes's bookplate designs was published by Frank J. Lankes, the artist's brother. In 1923 Lankes and poet Robert Frost began a friendship and artistic collaboration that lasted more than forty years. Lankes produced woodcuts to illustrate not only Frost's poems but also works by Roark Bradford, R. P. T. Coffin, August Derleth, and Ellen Glasgow. In 1925, after a brief visit to Europe, Lankes and his family moved to Hilton Village, near Newport News, Virginia. He accepted a lectureship at Wells College in Aurora, New York, in 1932. For the next seven years, Lankes taught at Wells College and visited his family in Virginia only during the summers. Lankes joined the reproduction section of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1943, where he remained until 1950. In 1951 Lankes moved to Durham, North Carolina. He suffered a debilitating stroke in 1959 and died on 22 April 1960 in Durham. J. J. Lankes was buried in Buffalo on 25 April 1960. The above Bio is from The Library Of Virginia. Affiliations:
Lankes and the AAG:
Lankes and Robert Frost:
The woodcut often associated with this poem:
There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.
Robert Frost
...As to your print, I'll tell you what I can. However, please don't expect the answer to be simple. The image is titled "Mower"; its catalogue number is L.50, and it was executed on January 12, 1919--cut on a block of cherry wood. Lankes noted in his Woodcut Record that he sent prints to several people, one of whom was the famous woodcut artist Gustave Baumann.Now the complicated part: The woodcut did not inspire Frost's poem "Mower," which was written in 1901. True, the image does appear in my book Riders on Pegasus: Robert Frost and J. J. Lankes (p. 24), but I did not make the final choices of the designs that were used. An editor chose L.50, knowing that it was Frost-like in subject matter. I've regretted that this image appeared in the book, as it is misleading.To make the issue more complicated, many years later (1939) Lankes did another "Mower" (L.979) for which Frost apparently posed. It is very different from the one you have. (He used it as a Christmas greeting.)Let me say a word or two about the actual proof you have. I believe that it is a trial proof, and I say this for several reasons: (1) it is not signed; (2) it looks as if some sort of notation was attempted and then scratched through; (3) there is a small smudge of ink showing above the upper left-hand corner, outside the "frame" of the image; (4) there are two slanting white lines showing between the mower and the cottage that should not be there; (5) the signature "Lankes" has not been cut into the bottom right corner of the block and, finally (6) the field in which the mower is cutting is virtually solid black, which means that the block is either over-inked or else the detailed delineation of the grain has not yet been completed.I do think that the copy shown on p. 24 of Riders on Pegasus shows the design in its completed state--i.e., as JJL intended it to appear. Although the actual link to Frost is tenuous, as I say above, this is how the design should look.Please do not think that I am being critical of the proof you have. But there are a lot of trial proofs floating around, and I feel that this is one. I do think it interesting, however, as a design-in-progress. The mower himself, the house, the sky and trees are all in effect finished. It's just that JJL went rather much further with the design.
Welford Dunaway Taylor writes on the relationship:
Robert Frost and J.J. Lankes' forty years of friendship and collaboration began in 1923 when Frost First saw a print by Lankes and then chose him to illustrate his poem "Star Splitter" for The Century Magazine. Although this event served as their formal introduction, Lankes was already familiar with Frost's poetry, and had even drawn on it for inspiration in some of his early prints. Welford D. Taylor, a prominent Lankes scholar, describes the appreciation that the poet and the printmaker had for each other's work: "What had impressed each man was a recognition of the aesthetic and thematic values he shared with the other -- a 'coincidence of taste,' as Frost put it. Both based much of their work on rural subjects, employed understatement and symbol and explored the question of human significance in the over-all scheme of nature. Some of these similarities they acknowledged when their actual correspondence began, in the summer of 1923, as Lankes prepared the 'Star-Splitter' designs." This "coincidence of taste" between Frost and Lankes can be seen in the more literal aspects of their artistic production as well as in the less tangible characteristics of their individual work. In his catalogue essay that accompanies the exhibition, Mark Jarman notes, "Robert Frost's poems reflect a country that was still mainly rural, but undergoing a profound change. Frost had seen the migration from the Farm to the city going on around him...In Frost's poems the rootless and abandoned, the alien and the alienated, the desperate and depressed, lead their lives among pastoral settings, apple orchards and haylofts, dry stone walls and sugarhouses, backroads and secluded clearings of wildflowers." The same rural characters and pastoral scenes that are found in Frost's lines occupy Lankes' prints as well, making them fitting visual accompaniments to the poetry. Aside from the aesthetic similarities, Lankes' prints relate to Frost's poetry on a thematic level as well. Jarman writes, "Frost's greatness as an American poet is embodied in [his] wish For wholeness in a fragmented and confusing world." This search for "wholeness" easily applies to Lankes as well and his self-contained, distinctly "American" woodcuts. Also, like Frost's poetry, Lankes' art is seemingly simple and direct, yet contains an underlying quality that often touches us deeply. Lankes' side of the relationship is even more difficult to gauge. Of his formidable oeuvre of some 1,350 designs (produced over more than forty years), approximately 125 have clear Frost connections. In the majority of cases, these works were not occasioned by a specific publication. Rather, they were creations growing out of Lankes' interactions with Frost, his immediate physical world (he visited Frost in South Shaftsbury, Vermont, on at least four occasions), and his poetry.
Literature including or about Lankes:
A descriptive checklist of the woodcut bookplates of J.J. Lankes: Foreword by Charles Harris Whitaker
Millersville, Pa., B. N. Osburn [c1937]
A Woodcut Manual
By J.J. Lankes [c1932]
Robert Frost and J.J. Lankes: Riders on Pegasus
By Welford Dunaway Taylor, 1996
The Woodcut Art of J.J. Lankes (Imago Mundi)
By Taylor, Welford Dunaway, 1999
The GOODHUES Of SINKING CREEK. With Woodcuts by J. J. Lankes.
By J.J. Lankes [c1932]
Lankes Painter-graver on Wood
By Bolton Brown, 1921 [Google Books]
Links to Info on J.J. Lankes:
Robert Frost and J J. Lankes: A Shared Vision of America - A neat article about Frost and Lankes collaboration and friendship. (Also has nice samples of his work)
A lecture on Frost and Lankes- This is a lecture by Welford Dunaway Taylor, it gives a very in-depth look at the Frost/Lankes relationship.
Neat photo - woodcut comparison. - Amazing how close to life his wood cuts are.
Wikipedia Article - Nice picture and lots of good links.
More of his woodcuts:
