AGNES WEINRICH

Pioneers of the PROVINCETOWN PRINT

By | Bill Evaul

Agnes Weinrich (1873-1946) came from Burlington, Iowa where she attended the Burlington Institute College and Iowa Wesleyan College. In 1899, she went to Europe to study art, first in Berlin, Germany for three years, followed by a year in Florence and Rome, Italy. She then returned to America to enroll at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1905-1906 before going back to Europe and Paris. Along with most of the American artists, she fled Europe in 1914. Agnes Weinrich would surely have joined the nucleus of six had she been in Provincetown that winter. Instead, upon her return from Europe she chose to attend the Art Institute of Chicago and did not arrive in Provincetown until the summer of 1916. Once there, she studied painting with Charles Hawthorne, learned the Provincetown Print technique and became a member of the Provincetown Printers where her abstractions, inspired by the cubists and fauves, made her a natural member. While holding the door of the Provincetown Library for her, Karl Knaths fell in love with Agnes Weinrich. She valued Knaths friendship and artistic sensibility but was not romantically attracted. So Knaths married Helen Weinrich, Agnes’s sister, and the three lived happily in Provincetown until their deaths.

Agnes Weinrich, Seated Woman 2 , white-line woodcut print. Image courtesy Provincetown Art Association and Museum.