Edna Boies Hopkins

Edna Boies Hopkins (October 13, 1872–March 24, 1937) was an American artist who made woodblock prints, based upon Japanese ukiyo-e art and Arthur Wesley Dow's formula of three main elements: notan, a balance of light and dark, line and color.

Edna Bel Beachboard was born on October 13, 1872 in Hudson, Michigan in 1872 to Cotilda C. Sawyer and David J. Beachboard, vice president of Boies State Bank. Her sole sibling was Earl James, who died in 1887 at the age of 16 from diphtheria. On March 2, 1892, at 19 years of age, she married the 27 year-old banker, John Henry Boies. Like the Bearchboards, he was a prominent member of the community. Boies accepted a position in the banking industry in Chicago and the coupled moved there. He contracted tuberculosis and Edna and John moved to Colorado to recuperate in the drier climate. He died in Denver on December 10, 1894. She remained a close relationship with her sister-in-law, Bessie Boies. After he died, she enrolled in the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 1895. She studied illustration, life drawing, wood carving, and sculpture until 1899. While there, she met fellow student John Roy Hopkins of Mechanicsville, Ohio. She shared an interest in woodblock printing with fellow students, Maud Hunt Squire and Ethel Mars, who became members of the Provincetown Printers on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

She then moved to New York and beginning April 1899 she studied with Evelyn Fenner Shaurman and Arthur Wesley Dow at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. She studied commercial art, composition, and watercolor until March 1900. Dow introduced her to ukiyo-e, Japanese woodblock printing, and a formula of three main elements: notan, a balance of light and dark, line and color. About 1900, she carved Enchanted Lilies, one of her first woodblock prints.

She taught traditional forms of art, Art Nouveau, and techniques that she learned from Dow at Veltin School for Girls by March 1900.

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