The Prairie Print Makers by Karal Ann Marling, Elizabeth G. Seaton, and Bill North

Just the gift prints

The 2001 book entitled The Prairie Print Makers was published in association with a traveling exhibition of prints curated by ExhibitsUSA, a program managed by the Mid-America Arts Alliance, headquartered in Kansas City. The Prairie Print Makers was an organization founded by ten Kansas artists in 1930 for the purpose of staging exhibitions of prints and promoting graphic arts in the media of lithography, etching, and relief prints. The group eventually grew to include over 100 artists from all over the United States and Canada, including some of North America’s finest printmakers. The majority of its members produced art in a realist or regionalist style, with landscapes, nature studies, and images of rural life being common subjects.

The text of this book consists of three short essays by cultural historian Karal Ann Marling and art historians Elizabeth G. Seaton and Bill North. The latter two are both curators at the Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University. In addition to providing a very brief overview of the group’s formation and its activities, the essays provide some insightful context on how the Prairie Print Makers fit into the American art scene of their time, growing out of a need for inexpensive art during the Great Depression, and how they eventually disbanded as abstract expressionism rose to prominence.

In addition to active members (the artists invited to join the group), the Prairie Print Makers had associate members. These were not artists but rather patrons and supporters of the arts, print collectors, and so on. In exchange for a modest annual membership fee, these associate members would receive a gift print each year. The Prairie Print Makers produced 34 of these gift prints from 1931 to 1965 (they skipped 1963), usually printed in editions of 200. The exhibition by ExhibitsUSA consisted of these 34 gift prints, and that is what is illustrated in the book. Each gets a full-page reproduction. Four are color prints, the rest black and white. Seeing all the gift prints assembled in one location is nice, but it’s kind of a lazy way to put together an exhibition on the Prairie Print Makers. A few of the gift prints were made by artists who clearly were not among the organization’s best. There are also examples of great artists turning in merely good work, sometimes not in their medium of expertise. One matter I’ve never found explained, in any source on the group, is how these gift prints, and the artists who made them, were chosen. Other than a concerted effort at variety in subject and style, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the selection. Was it a competition, or did the board just delegate an artist to do the job each year? If the latter, on what basis were they chosen?

Each gift print is accompanied by a short write-up, mostly consisting of biographical information about the artist. One of the most valuable aspects of this book is that it lists bibliographical references for most of the artists whose work is included in the volume, which brings the reader’s attention to some sources that are more informative than this one. Though Seaton’s and North’s essays are pretty good, the brief text of the book provides only the barest-bones overview of the Prairie Print Makers. A more thorough and attractive introduction to the Prairie Print Makers is the 1984 book of the same title by Barbara Thompson O’Neill, George C. Foreman, and Howard W. Ellington. It goes into much more detail on the formation of the group and the careers of its founding members, and the images chosen for reproduction are among the best works of some of the more important artists in the group.

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Prints reproduced in the book

Birger Sandzén, A Kansas Creek, lithograph, 1931

Norma Bassett Hall, La Gaude – France, color woodcut, 1943

Luigi Lucioni, Theme in White, etching, 1955

An African Millionaire: Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay by Grant Allen

Scam after scam from an expert flimflam man

Grant Allen (1848-1899) was a prolific Canadian-born British writer of both science books and fiction. His book An African Millionaire: Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay was published in 1897. The table of contents would lead one to believe this is a collection of short stories, since all the chapter titles begin with “The Episode of the . . .”, but really this is a novel. The chapters don’t really make much sense unless read together in sequence, and they all add up to one unified narrative. The story is narrated by Seymour Wilbraham Wentworth, who works as secretary to his wife’s brother Sir Charles Vandrift, the “African Millionaire,” an Englishman who has struck it rich in South African diamond mines. Vandrift has an estate in Scotland but spends most of his time in London. He and Wentworth’s adventures take place primarily in Europe, not in Africa, with a sojourn in America.

The first chapter gives the impression that the reader is in for yet another Sherlock Holmes pastiche, with Wentworth playing the part of Vandrift’s Dr. Watson. It soon becomes apparent, however, that the plot is not so much a mystery as it is a series of what might be called capers. The “illustrious” Colonel Clay is a con artist who sets his sights on Vandrift. In each chapter he comes up with a new ingenious scheme to bilk the millionaire out of thousands of pounds sterling. Colonel Clay (not his real name) is a master of disguise and various accents, as is his attractive female accomplice. The larcenous pair repeatedly fool Vandrift and Wentworth with their assumed personalities and ever-changing appearances. Thus, An African Millionaire does not emulate the Sherlock Holmes stories but rather presages the adventures of the gentleman thief Arsène Lupin created by French writer Maurice Leblanc in 1905.

The premise soon becomes formulaic, as the reader always recognizes that every new character the millionaire and his secretary encounter in each chapter will likely turn out to be Clay or his woman friend in disguise. This is very similar to the structure of another book by Allen, Miss Cayley’s Adventures, in which the heroine travels around Europe repeatedly encountering a rogue who serves as her nemesis. Vandrift and Wentworth get a little wiser in each chapter, employing various methods in an attempt to thwart the master con man, but Clay remains one step ahead of them. Allen’s clever and witty writing keeps all this from becoming monotonous, and the way he wraps things up in the final two chapters is delightfully smart.

Also adding to the fun is that the right-and-wrong, good-vs.-evil setup of the crime story plot becomes less cut-and-dried as the story moves along. Allen was a writer known for advocating radical ideas like evolution, socialism, atheism, and feminism. At first his leftist agenda is not readily apparent in An African Millionaire. The novel reads as if Allen aimed for an audience of the smart set, who would identify with Vandrift’s lavish lifestyle and expensive vacation destinations. After Clay’s first few scams, however, Allen starts working in digs at the British class system. The con man is fashioned into a quasi-socialist Robin Hood while Vandrift is painted as a greedy capitalist. Though Vandrift and Wentworth are supposedly the heroes of the book, Allen takes pleasure in satirizing the upper classes by frequently depicting the pair as buffoons.

An African Millionaire is a bit too familiar, predictable, and repetitive to get excited about, but it is a moderately entertaining read. I think I prefer Allen’s nonfiction writings, but his fiction is dependably good for those who appreciate Victorian pulp fiction along the lines of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
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Essential Marvel Team-Up, Volume 3 by Chris Claremont, et al.

Short stories, simple pleasures with Spider-Man and friends

When I was a kid and used to stop at the local drug store after school and pick up the odd comic book, one of my favorite titles was Marvel Team-Up. I liked Spider-Man at the time, and it was always interesting to see who he would be matched up with. The stories usually lasted only one, sometimes two issues, and you didn’t need to know the entire ongoing saga of the Marvel universe to understand what was going on. The paperback volume Essential Marvel Team-Up, Volume 3 reproduces issues 52 to 75 of Marvel Team-Up (with one exception, see below), as well as Marvel Team-Up Annual #1. These issues, originally published from December 1976 to November 1978, are reprinted in black and white on newsprint paper.

The main purpose of the Marvel Team-Up series was to capitalize on Spider-Man’s popularity, not only by allowing him to star in another monthly title but also by using Marvel’s star character to draw readers’ interest to other characters’ titles, sometimes through crossovers. Sometimes Spidey would team up with Marvel heavy hitters like Thor, Iron-Man, the Hulk, and Daredevil. As often as not, however, Marvel used the title to reinforce up-and-comers like, in this case, Ghost Rider, Power Man, and Iron Fist, or showcase minor characters who didn’t have their own book, like the Falcon, Havok, Tigra, and the Black Widow. All of the aforementioned guest stars are included in Volume 3.

No monumental events ever occurred in Marvel Team-Up that would shake the foundations of the Marvel Universe. The most important occurrence of note in this run of issues is the American debut of Captain Britain in issue #65. Chris Claremont, one of Marvel’s hottest writers of this era, wrote 16 of the 24 issues included here. This is not his best work, however, since the short story arcs and guest-star format don’t allow much room for character building. Bill Mantlo writes another half dozen issues. The creative highlight of this collection is the art by John Byrne, who draws 15 issues. His work always looks great even when the story is lackluster. The best overall story is probably Claremont and Byrne’s work in issues 59 & 60, in which Spider-Man teams up with Yellowjacket and the Wasp to fight Equinox, “the thermodynamic man.” When Claremont and Byrne are not at the helm, the issues included here seem almost childlike in their narrative simplicity, just a meet-and-greet in the beginning followed by an extended fight scene.

The most disappointing thing about Essential Marvel Team-Up, Volume 3 is that it doesn’t include issue number 74. That’s when Spidey teamed up with the Not Ready for Prime Time Players of Saturday Night Live—the late ‘70s cast with John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, etc. The Silver Samurai attacks the SNL studio, briefly confronting Belushi’s samurai character. Unfortunately, this bizarre story was omitted from the collection, not because Marvel didn’t consider it “Essential” but because they no longer had the rights to reference NBC’s properties.

Reading Essential Marvel Team-Up, Volume 3 was a nice trip down memory lane for me. This is not a landmark or groundbreaking run of issues in Marvel history, but that’s part of the charm. These adventures of Spider-Man and his colleagues are not overly ponderous, dark, or violent like so many of today’s Marvel products but rather a pleasant reminder of when comics used to be fun.
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In the Middle of America, Printmaking and Print Exhibitions: C. A. Seward and Friends, Wichita, Kansas, 1916-1946 by Barbara Thompson

Kansas’s impressive legacy of graphic art

When you think of important and influential art centers in America, chances are Kansas doesn’t pop into your head. In her 2013 book In the Middle of America, however, author Barbara Thompson reminds us that the city of Wichita was a thriving center of printmaking in the early 20th century. Thompson, an independent art historian, is also the granddaughter of C. A. Seward, an accomplished printmaker who was the driving force behind the Wichita arts scene and its particular interest in printmaking. Seward, a founder of the Prairie Print Makers and its most active member, organized many print exhibitions in Kansas and facilitated the exchange of prints and printing knowledge between Kansas printmakers and artists elsewhere in the United States and Canada. In the Middle of America, Printmaking and Print Exhibitions is the joint exhibition catalog for four concurrent printmaking exhibitions held in Wichita in 2013. In this book Thompson provides a wealth of detail on the history of the Wichita arts community and Seward’s activities to advance and promote art in the media of lithography, etching, and block prints.

In conjunction with his involvement in the Prairie Printmakers and the Wichita Art Association, Seward assembled a series of print exhibitions in Wichita from 1921 until his death in 1939. Thompson catalogs the prints that appeared in these exhibitions and discusses the artists, inside and outside of Kansas, who made them, including some of the most highly regarded printmakers in America and Canada at the time. In addition to an overall history of the regional printmaking movement in Kansas, Thompson provides biographical sketches of 79 printmakers and examples of their work. These biographies are not comprehensive but rather emphasize the artists’ connections to the Wichita arts scene. Thompson also looks into the impact made on American printmaking by the Western Lithograph Company, a commercial printer that, under Seward’s direction, diversified into producing prints by fine art lithographers.

Thompson’s writing is very informative and her research extremely thorough. The design of the book, however, is not great. It looks like it was typeset in Microsoft Word, and the long lines of Times Roman are not easy on the eyes. Instead of full-page photos, this book opts for many smaller images, around 1.5 x 2.5 inches each. I’m fine with that decision, because it provides more prints to view, but the way all the images are shoved into the gutter of the book does not make for comfortable browsing.

If you are looking for an introduction to the Prairie Print Makers, filled with big beautiful pictures, this is probably not the book for you. You would be better off reading Thompson’s 1984 book with George C. Foreman and Howard Ellington entitled The Prairie Print Makers, or the 2001 book of the same title authored by Bill North, Karal Ann Marling, and Elizabeth Seaton. In the Middle of America is a book for those who already have some prior knowledge of Kansas’s great printmaking history and are looking for more intricate and arcane details, of which Thompson amply delivers. This book will appeal to a very particular audience of readers: artists and collectors who appreciate realistic early modern printmaking and Kansans and Wichitans interested in the history of their state and/or city. Readers like me who fit into the specific intersection point of that Venn diagram will enjoy this book very much and find it loaded with valuable information.

Prints reproduced in the book

Lloyd C. Foltz, Among the Mines, block print, 1931

Birger Sandzén, Utah Poplars, lithograph, 1930

Gustave Baumann, Mountain Pool, block print, 1922

Jean-Christophe, Volume 3: Love and Friendship, The Burning Bush, The New Dawn by Romain Rolland

Lost among the supporting cast

French author Romain Rolland won the 1915 Nobel Prize in Literature shortly after publishing what is considered his magnum opus, a series of ten novels under the collective title of Jean-Christophe. This saga chronicles the life and career of fictional composer Jean-Christophe Krafft, who was born and raised in Germany but spends much of his life in France. When these ten novels were published in English translation, they were released in three volumes. The third of these volumes, sometimes appearing under the title of Jean-Christophe: Journey’s End, consists of novels eight, nine, and ten of Rolland’s series, respectively titled Love and Friendship, The Burning Bush, and The New Dawn.

The most surprising and disappointing aspect of this third volume of Jean-Christophe is just how small a part the title character actually plays in these last three volumes. Rolland seems to have become bored with his composer protagonist and feels the need to veer off into the life story of every supporting character in the series. Christophe barely appears in Love and Friendship. Instead, that novel focuses largely on his best friend and former roommate Olivier. The main plot concerns Olivier’s troubled marriage, but the reader is also treated to the back stories of Olivier’s friends and neighbors, his wife Jacqueline, and her family.

Olivier is still prominent in the first half of The Burning Bush, but the plot moves in a different direction when Christophe gets halfheartedly involved with the Socialist movement in Paris. In the second half of the ninth volume, a new woman enters Christophe’s life. One can clearly see the predictable direction where this is going and can only reluctantly ride out Christophe’s poor judgment and the impending certain disaster of that relationship. Much emotional angst ensues, and the reader’s eye rolls continue when the previously independent and freethinking Christophe finds God.

The final novel, The New Dawn, is a bit of an improvement over the previous two. At least it contains a trace of optimism in a new romance for Christophe, and he finally starts to show some maturity. Christophe moves around quite a bit over the course of these novels, from Germany to France to Switzerland and to Italy. This gives Rolland the opportunity to comment upon the national spirit of these different countries and cultures. In the early novels this felt more like stereotyping, but here at the end one can see Rolland sketching the mindset of Europe leading up to World War I. This historical commentary is probably the Jean-Christophe saga’s saving grace. Rolland also includes much commentary on the arts, but Christophe’s music career really gets lost in these last three novels. Christophe’s old age, however, allows Rolland to illustrate the cyclical process by which each generation of artists starts out as revolutionary youths and then matures and mellows with age.

Rolland was primarily known as a Romantic writer, but here in Jean-Christophe he ventures somewhat unsuccessfully into Naturalism, trying to illustrate how lives are molded by heredity and social forces. Unlike the naturalist masterworks of Emile Zola, however, there is no apparent master plan to Jean-Christophe. The narrative just seems to meander haphazardly, veering off into spontaneous digressions. The first few novels in Volume 1 of Jean-Christophe are quite captivating, but the series only loses steam as it moves forward and fails to live up to the promise of Christophe’s youth. This last and weakest of the three volumes is a struggle to get through.
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And on Piano . . . Nicky Hopkins: The Extraordinary Life of Rock’s Greatest Session Man by Julian Dawson

In-depth biography of rock’s preeminent keyboardist 

If you are an informed fan of ‘60s and ‘70s rock and roll music, then you have likely heard of Nicky Hopkins. If you are a human being on this Earth who has turned on a radio in the last half century, then you have certainly heard his work. One of the greatest piano players in rock music, Hopkins played on some of the best albums of the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Kinks, the Beatles (mostly their solo records), and a host of other artists from the stellar to the insignificant. Hopkins was an official member of a few bands, most notably Quicksilver Messenger Service, but for most of his life he was a much sought-after session man who worked as a hired gun on hundreds if not thousands of recordings. In the 2011 biography And on Piano . . . Nicky Hopkins, Julian Dawson chronicles the life and work of this talented and important musical artist.

Dawson, a British singer-songwriter, is a rock musician himself, though I had never heard of him before. The fact that Dawson is a working musician with firsthand knowledge of the industry—how music is written, published, recorded, promoted, and performed—enhances the backstage feeling of this behind-the-scenes look into Hopkins’s musical career. Dawson also met and worked with Hopkins, and his admiration and friendship for his subject is evident in the conscientious thoroughness with which he has crafted this biography.

Dawson is not a great writer by literary or journalistic standards, but he has produced a better book than most in the rock and roll genre. He could have used a good editor, though. To research this biography, Dawson interviewed over 150 people, most of them famous musicians, and collected many anecdotes and much praise of Hopkins. The downside of that thoroughness is that the book often reads as if Dawson felt obligated to include every one of those anecdotes, even the most tenuous and mundane. At its best, however, this book is a treasure trove of trivia for rock and roll fans. Heaping icing on the cake, Dawson provides comprehensive (if not impossibly complete) discographies of albums and singles on which Hopkins played.

Hopkins was not your typical rock star. He was a humble man, even insecure, and never seemed comfortable in the spotlight. Plagued with health problems since childhood, he had a frail and sickly constitution that prevented him from living life to excess. During his glory days touring with the Rolling Stones, Hopkins was a relative straight arrow compared to the rest of the substance-abusing group, but he later had his own addiction problems after moving to America, resulting in a lost decade of erratic behavior, career decline, and a dysfunctional marriage. His road to recovery, surprisingly, came through Scientology, which brings its own brand of dependency and cause for concern. Though Dawson has great affection for his subject, he doesn’t shy away from some of the less attractive aspects of Hopkins’s personality.

The career of this super session man was a roller coaster, and the reader experiences both the ups and the downs. Though always working, Hopkins wasn’t always financially secure or solvent. At the turn of the ‘80s he went from playing with a major league of rock superstars to a minor league of considerably more obscure musicians. Throughout his life, however, despite difficult circumstances, Hopkins managed to perform with professionalism and impeccable artistry. Dawson has given Hopkins the in-depth biography he deserves; now let’s get Nicky into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
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The Complete Original Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II

A few masterpieces in an otherwise middling collection

Guy de Maupassant

Like America’s Edgar Allan Poe or Russia’s Anton Chekhov, Guy de Maupassant is considered France’s master of the short story, at least for the 19th century. The Complete Original Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, a 13-volume English-language collection of the French author’s short fiction, was published in 1911. It is not really “Complete,” but it does contain 182 stories, eleven of which are gathered into Volume II. The selections, originally published in the 1880s, are not arranged in any discernible order.

Volume I of The Complete Original Short Stories included a dozen stories all set during the Franco-Prussian War, and initially it seems like Volume II is going to maintain that setting, as the first four stories all take place during that conflict. “Mother Sauvage,” about a French woman quartering Prussian soldiers in her home, is the prize of the volume, a stunning story both shocking and moving. On the opposite end of the spectrum, “The Mustache” is an unfunny piece of fluff penned as a faux letter from a woman to her friend, in which the narrator gushes over her love of a man with a good mustache. “Epiphany” is another humorous tale set during wartime, while “The Colonel’s Ideas” is a more conventional and predictable tale of wartime heroism.

The remaining selections do not mention the Franco-Prussian War, which makes for a nice change of scenery. “A Question of Latin,” a rom-com in which a student plays matchmaker for his meek Latin teacher, is warm and funny. The real standout stories, however, are those that depict a darker side of life. “Madame Baptiste” is a remarkable story in which de Maupassant frankly depicts the disgraceful way that so-called “respectable” 19th century society treated victims of sexual assault. “The Blind Man” is a similarly brutal tale about the abuse suffered by a blind man at the hands of his family and neighbors. This one feels less meaningful and believable than “Madame Baptiste” because de Maupassant only seems interested in sketching a worst-case-scenario portrait of cruelty.

All the stories are quite brief and can be read in ten or fifteen minutes each, with the exception of “A Family Affair,” which is roughly five times the length of the typical entries. De Maupassant was a writer of the Naturalist school, and his work clearly shows the influence of mentor Emile Zola. Nowhere in this volume is that more apparent than in “A Family Affair,” a story in which de Maupassant lampoons the suburban middle class. A meek office worker and his shrewish wife are jolted out of their routine existence when his mother dies. As a staunch Naturalist, nothing is sacred with de Maupassant, and the sanctity of funeral proceedings are turned into a ridiculous farce showcasing the selfishness, vanity, and greed of the deceased’s loved ones. Unlike Zola, who always reserves a little affection for even his most contemptible characters, de Maupassant clearly despises his cast, which somewhat lessens the fun for the reader.

Though “Mother Sauvage,” “Madame Baptiste,” and “A Question of Latin,” clearly demonstrate de Maupassant’s mastery of his medium, the remainder of the book’s contents are comprised of surprisingly mediocre fare. If one were to base one’s opinion of de Maupassant’s literary career on Volume II alone, his reputation as the French Poe or Chekhov might seem undeserved. This selection of stories is a step down from Volume I, but overall it is still an above-average collection of short fiction.

Stories in this collection

The Colonel’s Ideas

Mother Sauvage

Epiphany

The Mustache 

Madame Baptiste

The Question of Latin

A Meeting

The Blind Man

Indiscretion 

A Family Affair 

Beside Schopenhauer’s Corpse

The Fur Country by Jules Verne

Monotonous homage to the Hudson’s Bay Company

The French pioneer of science fiction Jules Verne strove to encompass a comprehensive breadth of scientific and geographic knowledge in his fictional works. This resulted in the 54 novels of exotic travel and adventure known as his Voyages Extraordinaires (Amazing Journeys), a series which includes such famed titles as Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days. In the tenth novel in this series, The Fur Country, Verne takes the reader on an adventure into the Arctic. The novel was originally published in 1873 under the French title of Le Pays des fourrures.

The story begins in 1859. The Hudson’s Bay Company is losing money because it has overhunted its prey, so it decides to expand its operations further into Northwestern Canada and Alaska. A party of explorers is dispatched to establish a new fort on the Alaskan coast above the Arctic Circle. After having reached their destination, the group becomes trapped in the Arctic and must find a way to escape their predicament. Although Verne acknowledges the environmental damage done by the fur industry, he simultaneously glorifies the romance, efficiency, and profitability of the company’s hunting operations. One admirable aspect of the book is the inclusion of a woman explorer who is treated with just as much respect and deference as the male officers.

Part of the fun of wilderness adventure is that being in the wild allows for freedom from societal laws and conventions. Unlike later authors of Klondike Gold Rush fiction, however, you won’t find any roughhousing in Verne’s work. Everyone in this novel observes the rules of Victorian propriety, and all the characters have the same prim and proper personality, so there’s never any conflict between them. The dangers and hardships of the North are never adequately conveyed. Even when they are building a fort, boat, or raft, these men of the Hudson’s Bay Company never seem to break a sweat, and the cold hardly seems to bother anyone. With the exception of a couple of scenes involving polar bears, all the perils faced by the travelers are the result of meteorological and climatological causes, meaning the novel is often about as exciting as watching ice melt. Verne tries to liven things up by having icebergs bounce around like magic bullets and working in more failed rescue attempts than an entire season of Gilligan’s Island.

There is one major plot point that just doesn’t make any sense. An astronomer accompanies the expedition so that he can observe a total solar eclipse that must be viewed above the seventieth parallel. Without spoiling too much of the plot, an argument develops over the coordinates of the party’s location, whether they are above or below the seventieth parallel. They have measured their latitude twice, and there is a discrepancy between the two measurements. However, the coordinates given from the first measurement (70° 44’ 37”) and the second measurement (73° 7’ 20”) are both above the seventieth parallel, so what’s the problem? This should have had no effect on the viewing of the eclipse. If anything, the second set of coordinates should have been advantageous to the astronomer. The whole story hinges on this one plot element, yet it seems an obvious error. Hasn’t anyone else noticed this in the past 150 years?

Before science fiction was called “science fiction” it was called “scientific romance,” which is a more fitting description of this work by Verne. The Fur Country is romantic adventure fiction that deals with scientific phenomena, but all within the realm of physical possibility. With this book Verne applies his “Extraordinary Voyages” treatment to meteorology, oceanography, and glaciology. One must have a very avid interest in those fields to enjoy this book because the characters and plot are not sufficient to captivate the reader.
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C.A. Seward: Artist and Draughtsman by Carole Gardner, et al.

Middle America’s printmaker extraordinaire

Born on a ranch in sparsely populated central Kansas, Coy Avon Seward (1884-1939) grew up to become one of his home state’s most accomplished artists, achieving national and international acclaim. Printmaking was his medium of expertise, and he also worked professionally in the printing and graphic arts industries. Not only was Seward a founding member of the Prairie Print Makers, he was the guiding force behind the organization’s formation and its operations over the first decade of its existence. Seward exhibited his lithographs, etchings, and block prints in America and Europe and received many awards for his work. The book C.A. Seward: Artist and Draughtsman was published by the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas as the catalogue to their exhibition of Seward’s prints in 2010.

The book contains two biographical essays on Seward. The first is written by three of his grandchildren: Carole Gardner, Barbara Thompson, and David Thompson. Barbara Thompson, under the name of Barbara Thompson O’Neill, previously wrote the book The Prairie Print Makers, which although brief is probably the best available overview of that group’s history and a beautiful little book to boot. I don’t know if she is a professional art historian, but she writes like a good one. Seward’s three grandchildren have compiled a very comprehensive chronicle of the artist’s career that also shows revealing insights into his generous and enthusiastic character. Seward was not only a great artist but also very active in many arts organizations, staging print exhibitions, and teaching and promoting other artists. Reading about his career in the early 20th century makes one nostalgic for the days when representational landscapes were better appreciated and successful careers were built on talent, hard work, and goodwill among fellow artists.

The second essay is by Spencer Museum curator Kate Mayer. Unfortunately, much of her chapter repeats what was in the first essay. That’s not a criticism of her writing but rather the fault of whoever edited the book. More attention should have been paid to avoiding redundancy.

Among the appendices is a catalog raisonné of all of Seward’s prints, though it is brief and only states the most basic data like title, date, and size. Not all of his 171 prints are pictured in the book, but more than 150 of them are. The most (and perhaps only) disappointing aspect of Seward’s superb body of work is that he only made a dozen block prints. From those few examples (including the gorgeous book cover), it is evident that he was a master of the linocut, at least in regards to landscapes. One can only wish that he had made more of these beautiful relief prints, but he preferred lithography and etching, and excelled at both.

The Spencer Museum of Art consistently produces books of very fine quality, and this publication is no exception. Seward’s prints look fabulous in these pages, and any fan of his work should seek out this book, which can be viewed for free online at the Spencer Museum’s issuu site. The prevailing history of art in America tends to stress that all worthwhile accomplishments were made within the creative spheres of New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles. However, there is a whole other history of exceptional artists who excelled in every corner of America, particularly during the heyday of regional realism. Seward is one such lesser-known modern master, and this lovely and well-executed book is a testament to the fact that talented artists on the Great Plains could compete with their big-city brethren.
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Prints by C.A. Seward

Mountains and Desert, lithograph, 1929

Land of Mystery, linoleum cut, 1930

Washerwoman’s Alley, etching, 1932