Peonies (also called Japanese Peonies or Peony) is a drypoint from 1926 by American artist Bertha Evelyn Jaques. It is pencil signed, titled and annotated 4th proof 2nd State. The reference is Czestochowski 357. This proof is from the second state and the final state had drypoint added to the background to print black. Peonies was printed by the artist on thin vellum paper in an unstated edition and platemark measures 9-15/16 x 7-7/8 inches.
Bertha Jaques, founder of the Chicago Society of Etchers, was a force in the print world of the early 20th century in America. Besides etching, she was interested in flowers and was an active member of the Wild Flower Preservation Society. She made cyanotype photograms of wildflowers by placing the flowers directly on sensitized paper and exposing the paper to light.
Bertha Jaques, poet, printmaker, and promoter, was born Bertha Evelyn Clausen in Covington, Ohio on October 24, 1863. She was primarily self-taught as an artist and began experimenting with etching after viewing an exhibit of Whistler's etchings at the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893. She convinced the director of the Art Institute of Chicago, William M. R. French, that the technique of etching could be used creatively and, with the assistance of others, persuaded him to install an etching press in the basement of the institute.
In 1909, she shared her ideas for the basis of a “needle” club with Ralph M. Pearson, Earl H. Reed, and Otto J. Schneider, and the following year the Chicago Society of Etchers was launched with an exhibition held in April in the basement of the Art Institute of Chicago. Jaques was tireless in her promotion of the art of etching and helped organize the society’s yearly exhibitions until she retired in 1931. She instructed other artists how to make etchings and, on occasion, she printed their plates.
Bertha Jaques’ work is represented in the collections of the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Massachusetts; the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Iowa; the Institute of Chicago, Illinois; the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Museum and the La Salle University Art Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the Portland Art Museum, Oregon; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California; the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Bertha E. Jaques died in Chicago on 30 March 1941.
