43. Stow Wengenroth
(1906-1978)
Bucks County

(click on image to print)
Wengenroth, Bucks County

Bucks County

Lithograph, 1944, Stuckey 137, Library of Congress 10, 335 x 300 mm. Fine impression on Rives wove paper with good margins, signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 40; paper discoloration around the old mat opening. Wengenroth is usually associated with views in Maine but he got around a good bit more than one thinks and a number of his works focus on Bucks County, Pennsylvania. This one, prototypical, has been given that name. Wengenroth was a masterly draughtsman and lithographer; that is allowed even by his detractors. But what is not often noted is that many of his images are about conflict: between competing birds, between rocks and surf, between the old and the new. The conflict here is between wild, experimental nature – the trees sending out branches from multiple points in multiple directions – and the square conventionality of civilization in the buildings and fences. Wengenroth was not so comfortable an artist as is often assumed.