Color woodcut on Japan paper, no date.
Edition of 75.
Signed, titled and numbered in pencil.
The sheet was folded on the left side, on purpose, to be used for a Christmas greeting on a folded paper tab. The tab, folded back, annotated in red crayon: “Cheery Christmas Wishes / to the / Three Bears / The Big tall Bear with black crayons / The medium sized Bears with lovely dolls / and / The Little Bear with many water colors.”
This is a veritable wilderness wonderland, with two toads or frogs in the foreground, a pair of white herons and a hummingbird in the middle ground, and a pair of deer, a buck and a doe in the background drinking from a waterfall. All this occurs in the middle of a dense, and lush rainforest, indicated very simply, but successfully with various leaf shapes and vines, opening to a clearing. With just two colors and a simple composition, Eva Auld Watson opens a whole wide forest to the viewer.
Image: 8 ¾ x 7 ⅜ inches.
