Studio: international art (83.1922)

"PALM canyon.” dry-point
BY GEORGE ELBERT BURR

GEORGE ELBERT BURR’S
ETCHINGS OF THE DESERT. *

NOT to every artist to-day is given the
opportunity of breaking new ground
—of discovering a hitherto untilled field.
More especially is this so with the etcher ;
how many plates have been etched, how
many stones lithographed, with various
artists’ ideas of St. Paul’s from the river,
Rouen Cathedral, Notre Dame, and Santa
Maria della Salute ! Their name is legion.
Mr. Lumsden, certainly, has shown us
examples of his exquisitely delicate work
from Indus to the Ganges, from Tokio to
Thibet, but no other name immediately
136

occurs to mind of an etcher working out-
side of the more or less beaten track. a
And now, Mr. George Elbert Burr, an
American artist, has produced a memorable
series of thirty-five plates, all dealing with
varying aspects of the desert lands of
Arizona, New Mexico, and California ; a
subject unknown and unattempted by any
etcher hitherto. Dry-points for the most
part, of small dimensions (averaging six by
eight or seven by five inches), they are of
quite extraordinary delicacy in execution,
and the atmosphere of these “ bad lands ”
is marvellously reproduced, for Mr. Burr is
an expert craftsman as well as a fine artist.
Almost every known method of handling