Walter Joseph Phillips

Cataloged under the artist's full name rather than a descriptive title, this woodblock print belongs to Walter Joseph Phillips's body of Canadian landscape work. Phillips (1884-1963) was born in Barton-on-Humber, England, and emigrated to Canada in 1913, eventually settling in Winnipeg and later Banff, Alberta. His adoption of the Japanese woodcut technique made him a pioneering figure in Canadian printmaking, demonstrating that a medium developed for depicting Japanese subjects could render the Canadian landscape with equal conviction. This uncataloged print would depict one of Phillips's characteristic subjects: a lake, a mountain vista, a winter scene, or a forest interior, carved and printed with the precision and sensitivity to color that earned him recognition as one of the finest color woodcut artists in North America. The oban format suggests a print of substantial size suited to landscape composition.