Jan C. Vondrous

Bridge of Charles IV, Prague

1912

Kerr Eby 'Hungerford Bridge, London', etching and sandpaper ground, 1929, edition 90, Giardina 144. Signed, titled, and annotated 'Ed 90' in pencil. Signed again in the bottom right sheet corner. A fine, atmospheric impression, with delicate plate tone, on cream wove paper; the full sheet with margins (1 1/2 to 1 5/8 inches), in excellent condition. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Hungerford Foot Bridge spans the River Thames in London, between Westminster Bridge and Waterloo Bridge. Eby visited Great Britain and France during 1924 and 1925. Impressions of this work are in the permanent collection of the following institutions: American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Arizona State University, Boston Public Library, Davison Art Center (Wesleyan University), Herbert F, Johnson Museum of Art, Huntington Museum of Art, Hood Museum of Art (Dartmouth College), Metropolitan Museum of Art, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, National Museum of American Art, New York Public Library, Smithsonian Museum of American Art. ABOUT THE ARTIST Kerr Eby was born in 1890 in Tokyo, Japan, the son of Methodist missionaries from Canada. The family returned to Vancouver when Eby was only three, and he grew up studying art encouraged by his parents as his mother was from a family of prominent artists. By age twelve, he had lived in Vancouver, Kingston, Toronto and Bracebridge where he found work as a ‘printer’s devil’ on the local Bracebridge newspaper. After graduating from high school in 1907, Eby moved to New York City to study art, first at the Pratt Institute, and later at the Art Students League. He enrolled in art classes at Pratt Institute while working for a lithographic firm earning $4.00 a week. His pay barely covered his room and drawing supplies. Within a year, starving and feeling defeated, he returned to Canada and was employed by a surveying party in Northern Ontario. Eby gradually regained his dream of becoming an artist, and in his spare time, he began to draw the surrounding wilderness landscapes. By fall he had returned to New York to attend night classes at the Art Students League while working for another lithographic firm. He spent several more summers surveying in Northern Ontario before he was able to make a living as an illustrator. During this period he formed several friendships with influential artists including John Henry Twachtman and Childe Hassam and joined a summer artists' colony founded by them at Cos Cob, Connecticut. He supported himself by working as a magazine illustrator and at the American Lithographic Company. Through diligent study and practice, Eby refined both his drawing and printmaking techniques. In 1917, when the United States entered World War I, Eby joined the U.S. Army. Failing to obtain a commission as an artist, he was assigned first to ambulance duty and later as a sergeant in the 40th Engineers in France. He spent most of WWI on the front line as a camouflager of the field artillery ‘big guns”. On his time off duty, he would sketch everything he witnessed, from the explosive big guns and men in action to the dead soldiers in the field. He sent the drawings home each week, and upon his return from the war, they became the basis for his first successful group of etchings. He continued creating his war-related prints throughout the 1920s and '30s as his work became widely exhibited Frederick Keppel, the renowned print dealer and a relative of Eby, became the exclusive agent for many of his print editions. With another global conflict beginning in the mid-1930s, Eby wanted to show the world the true face of war...

'The Plaza, Sunset Glow', drypoint, c. 1920s, edition not stated. Signed in pencil and initialed in the plate, lower right. Titled 'The Plaza, Sunset' and annotated 'no. 165' in ink, in the bottom left sheet corner. A superb, luminous impression in dark brown ink, with selectively wiped plate tone; on cream wove paper; the full sheet with margins (1 to 2 1/4 inches). Pale tape stains on the top sheet edge, recto, well away from the image, otherwise in excellent condition. Matted to museum standards, unframed. A view across 'The Pond' in New York City's Central Park, toward Grand Army Plaza...