Fine American Etchings

Featured American Etchings

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John Sloan Anshutz on Anatomy

John Sloan is one of this century's most well known American artists and master printmakers. He is remembered as a member of "The Eight," a group that was instrumental in the modernization of American art, and whose efforts led to the famous 1913 Armory Show. He was born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania in 1871. His family soon moved to Philadelphia in 1876. Sloan advanced his art career as free-lance artist specializing in illustration and design. In 1892 he took a full-time job with the art department of the Philadelphia Inquirer. In the fall of 1892 Sloan enrolled in a night class under Thomas Anshutz at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. While in Philadelphia, Sloan became close friends with other artists including Robert Henri, William Glackens, George Luks and Everett Shinn. Sloan moved to New York City in 1904. There he spent the greatest part of his life living and working in or around Greenwich Village and teaching at the Art Students League. Sloan is probably best known for his humanistic views of urban life that he produced in both painting and etching mediums. As the leaders of the Ashcan School of American Art, Henri and Sloan proclaimed that all life was fit subject matter for the artist.

Armin landeck

Armin Landeck was born on June 4, 1905 in Crandon, Wisconsin. Armin Landeck received his bachelor of architecture degree from Columbia University in 1927. Armin Landeck worked briefly as a draftsman in New York, got married, toured Europe for and returned to New York in the depths of the depression. Unable to find work as an architect, Armin Landeck pursued his artistic talents through printmaking. Armin Landeck became one of America's great printmakers. Armin Landeck's work is executed with eye of an artist and the hand of a master draftsman. Armin Landeck's work presented here page shows the obvious influence of architecture.

Reginald Marsh

An urban realist painter of New York City genre, Reginald Marsh devoted his career to depicting people going about their everyday business including Bowery bums, vulgar party goers, and persons elbowing their way in crowded subways. Reginald Marsh was also a printmaker, completing about 236 etchings, lithographs, and engravings, and devoted much time, especially in the 1930s, to printmaking. Many of his paintings were done in watercolor and egg tempera. Reginald Marsh was born in Paris to American-born artist parents, Fred Dana and Alice Randall Marsh. His family settled in Nutley, New Jersey in 1900 and later in New Rochelle, New York. After graduating from Yale University, Reginald Marsh worked as a free-lance illustrator in New York City for the Daily News and The New Yorker and studied at the Art Students League. Reginald Marsh was much influenced by urban realists John Sloan, George Luks and Kenneth Hayes Miller. Reginald Marsh went briefly to Europe and then returned to New York to pursue his sympathetic depiction of low-life subjects. In the 1930s, he did murals for the W.P. A., and in 1943, Reginald Marsh was elected a full Academician to the National Academy of Design.

Armin landeck

Armin Landeck was born on June 4, 1905 in Crandon, Wisconsin. Armin Landeck received his bachelor of architecture degree from Columbia University in 1927. Armin Landeck worked briefly as a draftsman in New York, got married, toured Europe for and returned to New York in the depths of the depression. Unable to find work as an architect, Armin Landeck pursued his artistic talents through printmaking. Armin Landeck became one of America's great printmakers. Armin Landeck's work is executed with eye of an artist and the hand of a master draftsman. Armin Landeck's work presented here page shows the obvious influence of architecture.

Howard Norton Cook (1901-1980) Lower Manhattan
Lithograph Printed by George Miller and Dedicated to the printer as a "printer's proof"

Lithograph. 14 x 10 1/8 inches. 1931. Ed. 75 (35 printed). Pencil signed and inscribed 'for George Miller', the master printer. Duffy 132. Wove paper.

About the Artist: Howard Norton Cook (1901-1980)

Howard Cook spent most of the 1920’s and1930’s in New York. Here he spent much time on his lithographs working with George Miller at Miller’s famous lithographic studio located on 14th street. Cook like so many of his fellow artist was filled with wonder at the gigantic structures and the canyons their structures produced. This urban scene was the inspiration of many of his New York scenes. In particular LOWER MANHATTAN and NEW YORK NIGHT. Howard Cook began his career with a $500 scholarship that sent him from his native Springfield, Massachusetts to New York City and the Art Students League. After two years at the League, Cook was impatient to see the world. He made his first trip to Europe in 1922, sketching and writing travel articles for a few publications back home. That winter he returned to the Art Students League to study etching under Joseph Pennell.

It was at this time that Howard Cook began his investigation of printmaking, concentrating on the etching medium primarily but exploring the woodcut as well. From 1922 to 1927 Cook worked as an illustrator for top magazines such as Forum and Century. In 1926 Forum gave him a commission to illustrate Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop. The woodcut technique was selected as appropriate for this purpose, and Cook decided to go to New Mexico to see the country which inspired this novel.

Cook lived for two months in Santa Fe before moving to an old hotel in Taos. There he met fellow artist Barbara Latham and they were married in Santa Fe in 1927. They traveled together for eight years, returning to New Mexico on occasion, before settling in Talpa, a tiny village south of Taos.

Howard Cook began in the mid-Twenties, to seriously explore the creative possibilities of various graphic media. In 1929, Howard and Barbara traveled to Paris. It was there that Cook took up lithography, producing his first prints in this medium at the Desjobert lithographic studio. During his time in New Mexico, Cook created a series of prints that reflected his fascination with the various cultures in the region. Scenes of Indian ceremonial dances are charged with the excitement that Cook himself must have felt. Several landscapes capture the broad expanses and rugged beauty of the terrain. The angular forms of adobe and pueblo structures seem to have been especially appealing, for they appear in a number of prints. The manner and direction of cutting, alone shapes and defines the ascending dark masses of the pueblo. Shimmering whites enliven pure blacks, obscuring details and endowing the whole with a mysterious grandeur.Cook devoted a decade of his life to the art of printmaking.

He mastered each of the major mediums – etching, aquatint, woodcut, wood engraving, and lithography – and produced outstanding examples of each medium. Having achieved a first-rank national reputation through his prints, he was ready for something else. He turned first to murals, then to pastel drawings and watercolors, and finally to oils and collages. Once he started in this new direction, Cook never seriously returned to printmaking.

Howard Cook "Lower Manhattan" Lithograph, Howard Cook "Lower Manhattan" Lithograph, Howard Cook "Lower Manhattan" Lithograph,

 

James A. McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) Unsafe Tenement

James Abbot McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) Unsafe Tenement, 1860 Etching and Drypoint

James McNeill Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, USA, in 1834. He spent five years of his childhood (1843-1848) in St. Petersburg, Russia, where his father, George Washington Whistler (1800-1849), a railroad engineer, was employed in the building of the St. Petersburg-Moscow railroad. The artist’s mother, Anna Matilda McNeill, was a devout Christian, whom he admired all his life. In his early manhood he exchanged his middle name ‘Abbott’ for her maiden name ‘McNeill’. In St. Petersburg young James received his first art lessons in the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts and also learnt French. In 1849, Major Whistler died and his wife decided to bring her family to their homeland, setting at Pomfret, Connecticut, where James attended the local school until, in 1851, he entered West Point, the famous military academy. West Point at the time was an exclusive school, to which cadets were selected by congressmen. No doubt that the fact that his father had trained at West Point secured Whistler’s entry. Never becoming a military man, Whistler remembered the three years spent at the academy with affection. Among all subjects Whistler succeeded only in drawing, special difficulties were caused by chemistry, which at last became the reason of his ejection from the academy. ‘Had silicon been a gas,’ He later declared, ’I would have been a general-major’. West Point was followed by a brief period of employment in the United States Geodetic and Coast Survey offices in Washington. In 1855, Whistler arrived in Paris, the artistic capital of Europe, with the intention of becoming an artist. The art of Gustave Courbet (1819-77) attracted his attention and admiration, but in his choice of teacher Whistler was very conventional. After a short period at the École Impériale et Spéciale de Dessin, he enrolled at the studio of Charles-Gabriel Gleyre (1806-74). At Gleyre’s, Whistler became part of the ‘Paris Gang’, a group of young English artists that included Edward Poynter (1836-1919), later president of the Royal Academy, Thomas Armstrong (1832-1911), Thomas Lamont (1826-98) and George du Maurier (1834-96). In 1858, Whistler set out on a tour of Alsace-Lorraine and the Rhineland, during which he made a set of etchings Twelve Etchings from Nature, better known as the French Set. Praise of the work encouraged Whistler to continue etching. Between 1858 and 1863 he produced 80 plates, Rotherhithe (1860), among them. In 1859, Whistler set to work on his first major painting, At the Piano, his first masterpiece, which marked the end of his student years and the onset of artistic independence. The work was rejected by the Salon. The same year Whistler moved to London, which remained his base of operations until 1892. From there Whistler made frequent visits abroad. In 1861, he started to work on Symphony in White No.1: The White Girl. The model was his mistress, Jo. Symphony in White No.1 came closest in mood to Pre-Raphaelitism. Later, in 1863, Whistler became acquainted with the Pre-Raphaelite group. In 1866, Whistler traveled to South America where the Chileans were engaged in a war against Spain, he kept a journal of naval and military developments but avoided involvement in any fighting. In 1877, Whistler began to paint a series of ‘Nocturnes’ based on the Thames views at night. One of his most famous works in this series in Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge, originally called ‘Moonlights’. His patron, Frederick Leyland, an enthusiastic pianist, suggested the term ‘Nocturne’. Whistler replied, ‘I can’t thank you too much for the name Nocturne as the title for my Moonlights. You have no idea what an irritation it proves to the critics, and consequent pleasure to me; besides it is really so charming, and does so poetically say all I want to say and no more than I wish.’ Critics were outraged. John Ruskin, when seeing Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket and other night scenes at the opening exhibition of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877, broke out in print: ‘I have seen and heard much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face’. Whistler sued Ruskin for libel and won the trial. Whistler was awarded a farthing damages; his feelings on the subject are embodied in the Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890). In the meantime Whistler started, in 1876, the decoration of the famous Peacock Room in the London house of his patron, Frederick Leyland. In the end, the artist and the patron quarreled bitterly over the room, and the quarrel grew into deep hatred. The loss of Leyland as a patron and the effect of Ruskin’s harsh criticism left Whistler in a bad financial position. In 1879, Whistler was declared bankrupt and left for Venice for the next 14 months. During that stay in Venice, he produced four oils, many etchings and almost 100 pastels. Aside from portraits, Whistler was much occupied in the 1880s with small seascapes in watercolor and in oil. Gray and Silver: Mist - Lifeboat.

Howard Norton Cook (1901-1980) Lower Manhattan
Lithograph Printed by George Miller and Dedicated to the printer as a "printer's proof"

Lithograph. 14 x 10 1/8 inches. 1931. Ed. 75 (35 printed). Pencil signed and inscribed 'for George Miller', the master printer. Duffy 132. Wove paper.

About the Artist: Howard Norton Cook (1901-1980)

Howard Cook spent most of the 1920’s and1930’s in New York. Here he spent much time on his lithographs working with George Miller at Miller’s famous lithographic studio located on 14th street. Cook like so many of his fellow artist was filled with wonder at the gigantic structures and the canyons their structures produced. This urban scene was the inspiration of many of his New York scenes. In particular LOWER MANHATTAN and NEW YORK NIGHT. Howard Cook began his career with a $500 scholarship that sent him from his native Springfield, Massachusetts to New York City and the Art Students League. After two years at the League, Cook was impatient to see the world. He made his first trip to Europe in 1922, sketching and writing travel articles for a few publications back home. That winter he returned to the Art Students League to study etching under Joseph Pennell.

It was at this time that Howard Cook began his investigation of printmaking, concentrating on the etching medium primarily but exploring the woodcut as well. From 1922 to 1927 Cook worked as an illustrator for top magazines such as Forum and Century. In 1926 Forum gave him a commission to illustrate Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop. The woodcut technique was selected as appropriate for this purpose, and Cook decided to go to New Mexico to see the country which inspired this novel.

Cook lived for two months in Santa Fe before moving to an old hotel in Taos. There he met fellow artist Barbara Latham and they were married in Santa Fe in 1927. They traveled together for eight years, returning to New Mexico on occasion, before settling in Talpa, a tiny village south of Taos.

Howard Cook began in the mid-Twenties, to seriously explore the creative possibilities of various graphic media. In 1929, Howard and Barbara traveled to Paris. It was there that Cook took up lithography, producing his first prints in this medium at the Desjobert lithographic studio. During his time in New Mexico, Cook created a series of prints that reflected his fascination with the various cultures in the region. Scenes of Indian ceremonial dances are charged with the excitement that Cook himself must have felt. Several landscapes capture the broad expanses and rugged beauty of the terrain. The angular forms of adobe and pueblo structures seem to have been especially appealing, for they appear in a number of prints. The manner and direction of cutting, alone shapes and defines the ascending dark masses of the pueblo. Shimmering whites enliven pure blacks, obscuring details and endowing the whole with a mysterious grandeur.Cook devoted a decade of his life to the art of printmaking.

He mastered each of the major mediums – etching, aquatint, woodcut, wood engraving, and lithography – and produced outstanding examples of each medium. Having achieved a first-rank national reputation through his prints, he was ready for something else. He turned first to murals, then to pastel drawings and watercolors, and finally to oils and collages. Once he started in this new direction, Cook never seriously returned to printmaking.

Howard Cook "Lower Manhattan" Lithograph, Howard Cook "Lower Manhattan" Lithograph, Howard Cook "Lower Manhattan" Lithograph,

Reginald Marsh (1898-1954) Erie R.R. and Factories Reginald Marsh (1898-1954) Gaiety Burlesque

About the Artist: Reginald Marsh (1898-1954)

An urban realist painter of New York City genre, Reginald Marsh devoted his career to depicting people going about their everyday business including Bowery bums, vulgar party goers, and persons elbowing their way in crowded subways. He was also a printmaker, completing about 236 etchings, lithographs, and engravings, and devoted much time, especially in the 1930s, to printmaking*. Many of his paintings were done in watercolor and egg tempera. Reginald Marsh was born in Paris to American-born artist parents, Fred Dana and Alice Randall Marsh. Reginald Marsh's family settled in Nutley, New Jersey in 1900 and later in New Rochelle, New York. After graduating from Yale University, Reginald Marsh worked as a free-lance illustrator in New York City for the Daily News and The New Yorker and studied at the Art Students League. Reginald Marsh was much influenced by urban realists John Sloan, George Luks and Kenneth Hayes Miller. He went briefly to Europe and then returned to New York to pursue his sympathetic depiction of low-life subjects. In the 1930s,Reginald Marsh did murals for the W.P. A., and in 1943, Reginald Marsh was elected a full Academician to the National Academy of Design. Reginald Marsh, renowned for his Depression-era portrayals of New York City life, was born in Paris to American parents, in 1898. He was raised in Nutley, New Jersey. Reginald Marsh's artistic career began during his student days at Yale, when Reginald Marsh served as the editor and cartoonist for the Yale Record. After graduating in 1920, Reginald Marsh spent several years working as an illustrator for various New York based periodicals, including the Daily News, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. In 1925 Reginald Marsh traveled to Europe to study. Reginald Marsh's life long ambition was to render contemporary life in the style of the Old Masters. Returning from Europe in 1926, Reginald Marsh enrolled in classes at the Art Students' League in New York. His instructors included two of the first generation Ashcan School painters, John Sloan and George Luks, whose urban iconography came to exert an important influence on his art. Following this, Marsh went on to paint murals for the Post Office Building in Washington, D.C. and for the New York Customs House. However, Reginald Marsh spent most of his time producing paintings, etchings, lithographs and drawings of such city themes as subways, burlesque halls, Bowery bums, amusement parks and leggy girls on 14th Street. Many of Reginald Marsh pictures, executed in watercolor and egg tempera or brush and ink, consist of phantasmagoric views of crowds of people taking part in rowdy yet exuberant social rituals. Reginald Marsh vigorous, baroque style in which he emphasized physical action and strongly modeled forms, is firmly rooted in the tradition of such masters as Peter Paul Rubens and Eugene Delacroix. Although Reginald Marsh subjects often relate to those of the social realists of the day, Marsh chose to remain aloof from all political entanglement, making Reginald Marsh ideas known only through his art. Reginald Marsh taught at the Art Students' League from 1935 until his death in 1954 in Dorset, Vermont. Reginald Marsh work, widely acclaimed during his lifetime, can be found in major public and private collections throughout the United States, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Howard Cook Lower Manhattan

James Whistler Unsafe Tenement

Howard Cook Lower Manhattan

John Sloan Anshutz on Anatomy

Reginald Marsh Erie R.R. and Factories

Armin Landeck York Avenue Tenements

Reginald Marsh Gaiety Burlesque

Armin Landeck Bedford Street