International studio (40.1910)

Etchings of Herman A. Webster

pont neuf by hkrman a. webster

THE ETCHINGS OF HERMAN A. the school games, and at Yale he was one of the

WEBSTER, A.R.E. editors and a valued illustrator of the Yale Record.

BY MARTIN HARDIE This love of art was fostered by a visit to the 1900
Exposition at Paris and by a tour in Japan and

There are wonderfully few etchers China. On returning home his desire to adopt art

to-day whose work strikes a note of imagination as his life calling wras checked by family opposition,

and individuality. One of that small company is and, at his father's wish, Mr. Webster—in the office

Mr. Herman A. Webster. of the Chicago Record-Herald and elsewhere—

An artist's life is written in his work, and the cold served two years of bondage to commerce. Deter-

facts of his biography are of little real importance, mination, however, won its way at last, and in Feb-

So I put here merely a few outlines of Mr. Webster's ruary, 1904, he set out to Paris with the family

career, the milestones that mark the route along consent to "try it for a year." That year is still

which he has proceeded. It has been a career of continuing.

strenuous activity, for the artist who now prints his Soon after his arrival in Paris chance led him to
finely wrought plates in his studio in the Rue de the Bibliotheque Nationale, where he saw some of
Furstenberg at Paris has graduated at a famous Meryon's etchings, and fell instantly under the spell
university, traveled round the world, spent two of the great artist whose sinister needle first re-
years in commercial life, toiled as general reporter vealed the mysterious and somber poetry of Paris
to a big daily paper, worked in a coal mine and and the Seine. From Meryon and from books he
acted as assistant cashier in a bank. And the tale forthwith taught himself to etch, receiving no out-
of his years is only just over thirty, for he was born side instruction, but evolving his own methods till
in 1878. Need I add—for an English reader it he attained mastery of the " teasing, temper-trying,
would be quite superfluous—that Mr. Webster is yet fascinating art"—a mastery the more valuable
an American, with New York as his native city ? and complete in that it was based on his own ex-
Mr. Webster came into the world with an innate perience. A first attempt was made from his
love of art. In his schooldays he made posters for studio window in the Rue de Furstenberg, and

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