Above the Trail

With its vertical format, deeply receding space, and emphasis on sky and clouds, Above the Trail is typical of Frances Gearhart's many woodblock print images inspired by the natural beauty of California's mountains, valleys, canyons, and Pacific coast. In this dramatic vista from a high vantage point, a chaparral-covered golden-green summit ascends toward a glorious bright blue cloud-filled sky. The artist's skill in representing skyscapes drew the admiration of critics as early as her first exhibition, a 1911 show of landscapes in watercolor. In Above the Trail, the purity of the fair-weather sky, a complement to the unspoiled mountain ridge, speaks to the early-twentieth-century popular ideal of California as a virtual paradise in which magnificent terrain and a benign climate were joined with social freedom and opportunity. This view of her adopted state informs many of Gearhart's landscape prints, such as Chill December (TF 1996.22), which also shares this work's vertical composition and bold outlining of forms.

Traditional Japanese color woodcuts were an important influence on Gearhart's printmaking, as demonstrated in Above the Trail in the artist's use of a brush to achieve a textured effect in the printed ink and in her tinted (rather than black) outlines that result in a softer, more atmospheric effect even in the emphatic rendering of the darker forms of the land. Gearhart also carefully harmonized color combinations in the manner of influential printmakers Frank Morley Fletcher, as in his Ojai Valley (TF 1996.18), and Arthur Wesley Dow in The Purple Sky (The Long Road), Spring (TF 1995.32). She used pale lavender and pink tones to subtly model the undersides of the clouds, while even lighter hues define the upper, sunlit portions of the billowy white forms. Blue, dark green, and soft pastel shades for outlines and linear details further enhance the pearly luminosity of her image.