American Etchers Abroad, 1880-1939

Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas American Etchers Abroad 1880 - 1939 : Detailed Exhibition From its first applications as a printmaking medium around 1500 to the work of contemporary printmakers, the singular characteristics of etching have offered a seductive array of technical and aesthetic possibilities that distinguish it from other printmaking processes....The closing decades of the nineteenth century witnessed a significant number of American painters traveling abroad, some of them surely inspired by Mark Twain's witty and immensely popular, no-nonsense guide to Europe and the Holy Land. Swayed by the increasing popularity of etching in America and elsewhere, many of these painters put aside their paint pots and brushes in order to register their impressions of Europe and the Orient on the copper plate. Essentially self-taught in the art of etching, they were given an exceptional amount of freedom in developing their individual styles. Yet collectively, they shared a romantic sensibility, as was demonstrated by their predilection to represent things as they once were and will never be again. With lightened baggage, they scoured the earth in search of the picturesque and the exotic, which some of them discovered in the medieval streets and courtyards of Paris, the slumbering canals of Venice, and the congested marketplaces of Cairo and Constantinople. Their curiosities satisfied, many returned home and settled back into a comfortable life in the United States, content with their souvenirs and remembrances. However, a few chose to remain abroad, establishing their reputations in their adopted countries. By the end of the century, this mass migration to foreign shores had ebbed significantly, only to be reborn in the early decades of the twentieth century, when another wave of American painters ventured abroad, many of them treading in the footsteps of their predecessors…