Vintage Wooden Leaning Chair

Noël Daggett was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1925. He became known for his neo-impressionist quadrille paintings likened to mosaic compositions or latticework. Later, he did more traditional style paintings of western genre and landscape. At an early age, he moved to California with his parents and won a scholarship to the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. During World War II, Noël was a Merchant Marine in the South Pacific and then took odd jobs in California, including the truck driver and fender repairman. He moved to Chicago and studied at the Chicago Art Institute and also studied privately with Leonard Rodowicz (1898–1981). In 1953, he was drafted into the Korean War and then was in military service in Germany doing illustration for Army bulletins. After discharge, Noël remained in Heidelberg for three years as a civilian illustrator. In 1958, he decided to become a professional illustrator and studied advertising in Los Angeles at the Art Center School. However, after one year, he switched to fine art, and after six semesters went to New York, where he won a scholarship to the New School and studied with Raphael Soyer (1899–1987). Noël also had a one-man show in Paris at the Galerie Ror Volmar in 1962. In New York in the 1960s, he had his work well received and earned honors including, the Emily Lowe Award and the Harold Stevenson Gold Medal of the American Veterans Society of Artists. Noël’s studio was on the top floor of a thirty-story building close to Times Square with a skylight and panoramic view of the city. His paintings come from a variety of sources from landscapes to figures, and he has also done mural decorations for the New York restaurant Henry IV. In his later years, he established a studio in Tucson, Arizona, from where he traveled extensively throughout the country.

Decorating with fine art prints — whether they’re figurative prints, abstract prints or another variety — has always been a practical way of bringing a space to life as well as bringing works by an artist you love into your home.

Pursued in the 1960s and ’70s, largely by Pop artists drawn to its associations with mass production, advertising, packaging and seriality, as well as those challenging the primacy of the Abstract Expressionist brushstroke, printmaking was embraced in the 1980s by painters and conceptual artists ranging from David Salle and Elizabeth Murray to Adrian Piper and Sherrie Levine.

Printmaking is the transfer of an image from one surface to another. An artist takes a material like stone, metal, wood or wax, carves, incises, draws or otherwise marks it with an image, inks or paints it and then transfers the image to a piece of paper or other material.

Fine art prints are frequently confused with their more commercial counterparts. After all, our closest connection to the printed image is through mass-produced newspapers, magazines and books, and many people don’t realize that even though prints are editions, they start with an original image created by an artist with the intent of reproducing it in a small batch. Fine art prints are created in strictly limited editions — 20 or 30 or maybe 50 — and are always based on an image created specifically to be made into an edition.

Many people think of revered Dutch artist Rembrandt as a painter but may not know that he was a printmaker as well. His prints have been preserved in time along with the work of other celebrated printmakers such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol. These fine art prints are still highly sought after by collectors.

“It’s another tool in the artist’s toolbox, just like painting or sculpture or anything else that an artist uses in the service of mark making or expressing him- or herself,” says International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) vice president Betsy Senior, of New York’s Betsy Senior Fine Art, Inc.

Because artist’s editions tend to be more affordable and available than his or her unique works, they’re more accessible and can be a great opportunity to bring a variety of colors, textures and shapes into a space.

For tight corners, select small fine art prints as opposed to the oversized bold piece you’ll hang as a focal point in the dining area. But be careful not to choose something that is too big for your space. And feel free to lean into it if need be — not every work needs picture-hanging hooks. Leaning a larger fine art print against the wall behind a bookcase can add a stylish installation-type dynamic to your living room. (Read more about how to arrange wall art here.)

Find fine art prints for sale on 1stDibs today.