[Christmas greens. Woman and girl fashioning decorations]

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Two women and a girl gather evergreen boughs and shape them into holiday decorations in this etching and drypoint by Julian Alden Weir, the American painter who also worked extensively in printmaking. Weir based the plate on one of his own watercolors, so the composition began as a painting before being translated into the fine lines and burr of the copper. He was part of a generation of American artists who turned to etching in the late nineteenth century, and the drypoint's soft, velvety shadows suit the texture of fir and holly. No date survives with the plate, so it is best understood through its technique and the artist's career.

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