In 1913, with the looming threat of world war, many American artists working abroad elected to return to the United States. Lazzell, a young West Virginian who had traveled to Paris to study painting, was one of them. After briefly returning to her home state, she moved to the coastal whaling town of Provincetown, Massachusetts, where a colony of former expatriate artists were experimenting with modern art. There, Lazzell took up printmaking, and she joined a small group of printmakers who were inspired by 19th-century Japanese woodcuts.

Lazzell quickly mastered the “white line” print, a challenging technique that involves printing a multicolored image from a single printing block. The technique allowed her to achieve subtle effects of color and texture, such as the pale blue in this print that veils the distant Appalachian Mountains, which rise above the Monongahela River as it flows through Morgantown, West Virginia.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)