View of a Town

Edward Alexander Wadsworth British

Not on view

In this color woodcut, Wadsworth created a complex construction comprising layers of simplified geometric shapes. Using just three colors (gray, blue, and black) as well as the gray color of the paper, he depicted a townscape, most likely of Bradford, in the north. View of a Town is less abstract than his prior work, such as Bradford: View of a Town, in which he engaged a similar subject. Rather than using multiple interlocking lines of various sizes recalling earlier Analytic Cubist depictions of landscapes and similar motifs, in View of a Town, Wadsworth employed a vocabulary of sharp angles and larger flat planes of color. Though the work is still abstract, representational elements—such as chimneys and roofs—are visible to a greater degree than previously.

View of a Town, Edward Alexander Wadsworth (British, Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire 1889–1949), Woodcut on gray paper

Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.

Open Access

As part of the Met's Open Access policy, you can freely copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes.

API

Public domain data for this object can also be accessed using the Met's Open Access API.