Edna Boies Hopkins: Strong in Character, Colorful in Expression

Edna Boies Hopkins (1872–1937) is best known for herfloral woodblock prints that range from delicate Japanese-inspiredstylizations to boldly colored and progressivelymodernist works. In her brief twenty-year career, Hopkins producedseventy-four known woodblock prints, including figurativework and landscapes as well as floral compositions. This catalogueraisonné is the first in-depth study of this once well-known Americanartist. It illustrates all of Hopkins’s known prints, related drawings, andstudies.

Born in Hudson, Michigan, Hopkins attended the Art Academy of Cincinnatifrom 1895 to 1898. In 1899 she took classes with the influential artist ArthurWesley Dow, an advocate of Japanese art. Following her marriage in 1904, Hopkinsand her husband settled in Paris, where they remained until the outbreakof World War I. After returning to America, Hopkins became part of a smallgroup of artists in Provincetown, whose innovations in woodblock printmakinghave come to be known as the Provincetown print or the white line woodcut. In1917, a visit to the Cumberland Falls region of Kentucky provided the inspirationfor some of Hopkins’s most important prints which predate the work ofAmerican regionalist painters and printmakers by a decade or more.

In addition to the catalogue raisonné, Edna Boies Hopkins includes much new biographical research along with a census of her prints and a comprehensive list of her exhibitions.

Exhibition Dates
Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH,
December 14, 2007–March 2, 2008

Springfield Museum of Art,
Springfield, OH, March 15–June 1, 2008

Provincetown Art Association and Museum,
Provincetown, MA, June 1–Aug. 3, 2008

Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH, Feb. 20, 2010–May 2, 2010

Dominique H. Vasseur, curator of European art at the Columbus Museum of Art, is the author of The Soul Unbound: The Photographs of Jane Reece and The Lithographs of Pierre-Nolasque Bergeret.