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The Road Less Traveled:
Thomas Nason's Rural New England

January 17 through April 12, 2009

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Driven throughout his career by a devotion to craftsmanship, technical mastery and realism, Lyme printmaker Thomas W. Nason (1889–1971) built a lasting reputation as an artist working in a time-less style, independent of current trends in the art world. At his studio on Joshuatown Road, however, Nason quietly absorbed and processed influences from a broad range of sources. This exhibition takes two paths toward understanding Nason’s body of work: the common route, which examines the poetics of his somber observations of rural New England, but also the road less traveled, which explores for the first time the modern qualities of his prints.


First the exhibition examines Nason’s role as “the poet engraver of New England." The artist is perhaps best known for the wood engravings he created to accompany many treasured poems by Robert Frost. Both Nason and Frost connected with and appealed to a broad spectrum of the American public through their imagery of rural life in New England. The deliberate and stark lines of Nason’s wood engravings echo Frost’s carefully chosen, measured language. Several of their collaborations, including limited editions of Frost poetry and rare chapbooks illustrated by Nason for the renowned Spiral Press are onview here. Beyond his work illustrating poetry, Nason’s stirring pastorals and deep meditations on nature and regional architecture encourage a poetic reading of his prints.

The exhibition also highlights Nason’s deep appreciation for the history of wood engraving and simultaneous turn toward the modern. Nason’s prints are hung side by side with traditional nineteenth-century printmakers as well as more innovative artists of the twentieth century. Nason’s tendency to produce sharp, precise, and stylized images reflects the changing aesthetics of the modern era. The prints selected from Nason’s body of work emphasize the abstract elements evident in his smooth lines, simplified forms, and silhouetted compositions—traits that lend his works a surprisingly modern quality comparable to that of noted American Regionalists Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton.

Several images, like The Leaning Silo, 1932 or Milkweed Pod, 1954 owe their impressive depth to the multi-color process called chiaroscuro wood engraving. Summer Storm, 1940, represents the most complicated print in Nason’s oeuvre and is often considered his greatest achievement. “Chiaroscuros, the way I made them,” Nason wrote, “were the most difficult of anything I’ve done.” Made up of three separate blocks, and inked with four different colors, Nason calculated that he pulled the lever of his press at least 700 times in the creation of an edition of 90 prints. He created only 25 different chiaroscuro engravings over the course of his career. In all of his work, craftsmanship mattered to Nason above all else as he echoed in a 1966 essay: “It is better to be exquisite than to be ample.”

How the Florence Griswold Museum came to have the
largest body of Nason prints and archival material
During Thomas Nason's lifetime, in 1962, he was commissioned to engrave an image of the Florence Griswold House, which was the first direct interaction he had with the Museum, then simply known as the Lyme Historical Society. Shortly after Nason's death in 1971, the Museum organized a small show of his works entitled Thomas W. Nason, A Personal View of New England. In 1989, when the opportunity to purchase a substantial collection of Nason prints arose, the Museum committed to support to the artist's reputation and legacy. That commitment led the artist's niece, Janet Eltinge, the heir of the Nason estate to make a substantial donation of materials in 1991. This gift included not only prints, but the artists meticulously preserved studio contents, from tools, to papers, to photos, and personal items. The gift was celebrated in the 1993 exhibition Thomas W. Nason: American Printmaker.

Images:
Robert Frost and Thomas Nason, The Wood-pile, Spiral Press, 1961, Florence Griswold Museum

Thomas Nason, Maine Islands, 1954, copper engraving, Florence Griswold Museum, Gift of Janet Eltinge

Thomas Nason, The Boathouse, 1943, wood cut, Florence Griswold Museum

Thomas Nason, The Leaning Silo, 1932, chiaroscuro wood engraving, Florence Griswold Museum

homas Nason, A Deserted Farm, 1931, wood engraving, Florence Griswold Museum

Thomas Nason, Midsummer, 1954, wood engraving, Florence Griswold Museum, Gift of Janet Eltinge