Alice Mason: Prints from the Permanent Collection

July 16 - December 31, 2021

Alice Trumbull Mason (1904-1971) explores the process of lithography. Born in Connecticut, she is a descendant of well-known Neoclassic artist John Trumbull on her father’s side; her mother was an artist as well. Mason worked in oils, watercolor, and printmaking and often mixed her own paints and ground her own pigments. The prints in this exhibition are delicate examples of Mason’s printmaking practice, most likely an experimentation of the lithography process. Made in the 1930s and 1940s, she uses flowers, trees, and other botanicals as her subject, but focuses on building texture and balance on the paper.

Mason was widely known for her affinity for abstraction and was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists in 1936. Her work is in the collections of the Boston Public Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Center, among others.