William S. Rice: California Block Prints

by Roberta Rice Treseder

William Seltzer Rice (1873-1963) was a young artist of twenty-seven when he stepped off a train in Stockton, California, in 1900; he had left his home in Pennsylvania to take the job of assistant art supervisor for the Stockton public schools. California became not only his lifelong home but also his muse, inspiring a prolific career in art. Rice soon moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where the region's Arts and Crafts movement was flowering. He was talented in several mediums, but block printing ultimately became his favorite, for it gave him the opportunity to combine his skills of draftsmanship, carving, and printing. California's flora, fauna, and landscapes--from the Sierra Nevada to the Pacific--were the subjects that fed his creativity. William S. California Block Prints is the first book published on the artist's work and presents more than sixty of his color block prints dating from 1910 to 1935. Among the prints featured are scenes from Yosemite, Mt. Shasta, Monterey, Carmel, the San Francisco Bay Area, Lake Tahoe, and other California landmarks. An essay by Roberta Rice Treseder, Rice's daughter, recounts his life and achievements, with special emphasis on his block printing methods and materials. William S. Rice's works are in many private and public collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Oakland Museum of California, the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, the New York Public Library, and the Worcester Art Museum.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

80 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2009

Reviews

[GoldGato · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can look at this book all day, every day, just because I love the wood block prints and the gorgeous colours. William Seltzer Rice also did wonderful watercolours but the California prints remain his most famous works of art.



Rice moved to California as a young man and he loved the crumbling old adobe missions and buildings from the old Spanish towns. At the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, he was deeply influenced by the Japanese method of wood block prints. They were vivid, unlike the European prints, but Rice went his own way in regards to the actual production of art. For whereas the artists in Japan used a team to make a print (artist, woodcutter, printer), Rice did everything himself. This allowed him to stay close to his original subject, which basically made him the Steinbeck of American illustrators.



A leading artist of the Arts & Crafts movement, the work of William S. Rice is still lovely to view, as he captured parts of California that have since disappeared under developers' malls. This isn't a large book of all his work, but it is an excellent introduction with an essay by his daughter and pages upon pages of prints. Always nice for a looky.

Book Season = Year Round (pines, shrikes, moonlight)

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely collection of Rice's prints along with a short biography. Many of these prints are in the public domain, you can find many of them online. Classic and vanished California scenes portrayed in the Arts and Crafts style. I wish the book was a bit larger, but it's a nice collection.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are better books on this subject now, but this was still helpful.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love his sureness. I love his composition. and then there's his color. -- I blush about my feelings for that.