Color woodcut on black wove paper. 445x280 mm; 17 1/2x11 inches, full margins. Signed, titled and numbered 28/30 in white pencil, lower margin.
Ryan (1889-1954) began creating prints in the early 1940s, and at Atelier 17, Ryan learned to make color woodcuts in a 1945 class taught by Louis Schanker. Ryan learned the white-line woodcut technique, innovated by printmakers in Provincetown around 1915 who were inspired by 19th-century Japanese Ukiyo-e woodcuts and carved their designs onto a single block, rather than multiple blocks as in the western printmaking tradition, inking each section with a different color. The small grooves between each segment create the distinctive white lines of these woodcuts. However, Ryan opted for black paper, creating the "black line" woodcut.
