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Nouveau Peacock…At Last!

The latest addition to my store has finally arrived!

Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while might remember my posting about a peacock print I was working on back in 2009. I finished carving the block in 2010 or so, but I just never got around to printing it. I don’t really have a reason for not doing so, rather, it just slipped through the cracks. In any event, this print is called “Nouveau Peacock.” It was inspired by the Art Nouveau and Japonism movements.

For background, Japonism was a popular art movement among Impressionists and other artists working during the 1880′s-1905. In 1890 the École des Beaux-Arts featured a survey exhibition on the history of Japanese woodblock prints.* Many artists, including Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), and James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), were profoundly inspired by these prints and began to incorporate elements of East Asian art into their works. This trend proliferated and continues today.

The cherry blossom tree in the background of this piece pays homage to the Japonism movement. The print’s border is based off a Pencraft Ornamental Border design that I discovered in a 1925 Type Specimen Book. The rest of the image was designed around the border. The peacock is stylized, stressing flowing, curvilinear lines.

To see my earlier post about this print, click here.

This print is now available for purchase in my Etsy Store!

Click the link below to buy this print and/or see other available prints

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*Source: Elizabeth Hutton Turner, et al., Pierre Bonnard, Early and Late, (Washington D.C.: Philip Wilson Publishers in collaboration with The Philips Collection, 2002), 190.

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