International studio (51.1913/1914)

A Front-Rank Man in American Etching

fers to his plates. A man must be steeped in
imagination, both a poet and a dreamer of dreams,
to seek themes in such God-forsaken tracts as to
most people are these desolate, wind-blown tracts
on the southern shores of Lake Michigan. To
Mr. Reed, far from being God-forsaken, these
regions are full of poetry and mystery. The un-
folding of Nature’s drama may be observed amid
the whirl and swirl of the shifting sands and in
the approaching storm; a haunting melancholy
and a spirit of desolation hover over the sparse
vegetation in its pitiful struggle for life. This is
the region that attracts Mr. Reed, even to the
extent of casting a spell upon him, and in the
plenitude of years, when the roll of fame is
unfolded, we shall find this artist’s name staked
to the dunes—not to the Field Museum, charming
as this series is, nor to his Chicago River products.
These shores of Lake Michigan have not only
afforded mysterious peeps at Nature calm and
Nature ruffled, but have given this poet-artist a
great love of animal life, to which so many of his
plates bear tender witness. He has been brought

into intimate contact with wild-fowl, butterflies,
rabbits; and quite recently with crows, of which
we reproduce his very latest plates. They show
his most recent work at Lakeside, and are very
subtle and distinctive studies of bird life. The
one entitled Neighborhood Gossip is a charming
“sonnet in line.” The mother bird inclines for-
ward from her nest, and is divided between loyalty
to her future brood and love of gossip in her
effort to overhear the chronique scandaleuse which
is being exploited by three eager birds on the
branch below. She is leaning over as much as is
compatible with a strict sense of duty and balance.
The poetry of sea, of trees, the shore, a
flight of birds, an oncoming storm, the driven
sand, the play of the winds, a tangled root, the
light waning through the trees are the subjects
which arrest his attention. One of his most popu-
lar plates, where the dark masses are admirably
presented against the light and where the crisp
line makes such charming play, is entitled The
Homing Call—a flock of ducks is speeding over
the marshes, while a heavy storm broods in the

Courtesy of the Brown-Robertson Company
THE HOMING CALL BY EARL H. REED


LXXXIII