Collection Spotlight: Flanders Poppies by Ora Maxim
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
This first stanza is from the poem “In Flanders Fields”, written in 1915 by Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, during the First World War. Three years later, in 1918, American teacher Moina Michael read the poem in the November 1918 edition of Ladies Home Journal and, transfixed with the idea of not forgetting the fallen, worked the rest of her life to fulfill this goal, championing the poppy as a symbol of remembrance.
Flanders Poppies by Ora L Maxim (c. 1930) is created in the style of the Provincetown printers, with white lines separating each color. The woodgrain is accentuated and emphasized with deliberately carved vertical lines in the block. The ink was likely applied by hand, allowing the artist a great deal of control and the ability to achieve gradations of color in the green leaves and individual flower petals. See this and other examples of Provincetown white-line woodcuts in American Arts and Crafts Woodblocks, on display now at MAACM.