A. J. Rosenfeld etchings collection

Mr. A. J. Rosenfeld lived at 721 Market Street, Camden, New Jersey. During the middle of the twentieth century, Rosenfeld made several small donations of graphic materials to the University of Delaware Library.

One such collection comprising twelve etchings by six nineteenth and twentieth century American and European etchers was received by Director of Libraries John M. Dawson in May of 1960. Most, if not all, of Rosenfeld's gifts to the library during this period were coordinated by Mabel Zahn of the Philadelphia-based rare books and prints firm of Charles Sessler, Inc.

SOURCES:

Information derived from correspondence files.

Felix Buhot (1847-1898) was born and educated in Valognes, Normandy. He moved to Paris to study painting and drawing at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. His early artistic works included designing music score covers. In the 1870s he turned to etching reproductions of paintings for magazines and book illustrations. At the same time, he produced etchings of his own drawings, often scenes of France and, later, England. He frequently printed on old or unusual paper to add interest to his images. By the 1880s he turned away from printmaking, focusing almost entirely on painting, although he continued to exhibit his prints. During the last ten years of his life, he suffered from depression and virtually abandoned his artistic career.

SOURCES:

Jay Mckean Fisher & Colles Baxter, Felix Buhot: Peintre-Graveur, Prints, Drawings, and Paintings. The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1983.

Kerr Eby (1889-1946) was born in Japan, the son of American missionaries. His only formal art training was a year at the Pratt Institute. As a young man, he worked at the American Lithographing Company and as a surveyor in Canada. Returning to New York, he began to produce etchings, primarily of rural landscapes. His service in France during World War I inspired his best work: black and white etchings showing unromanticized images of soldiers and troop movements against a bleak landscape. Later in his career, he produced many landscape prints of scenes from the United States, Europe, and North Africa.

James McBey (1883-1959) was born in the fishing village of Newburgh, Scotland. He worked at a bank while teaching himself the techniques of etching. His early subjects were primarily the landscapes and seascapes of his home. Greatly influenced by the engravings of Rembrandt, he traveled to Holland and later to the Middle East, capturing images of his travels in his etchings.

SOURCES:

Malcolm C. Salaman, The Etchings of James McBey. London: Halton & Truscott Smith, 1929.

Charles Meryon (1821-1868) was born in Paris. He entered the Navy in 1837, and in the next ten years traveled to Greece, North Africa, South America, and the South Pacific. He studied art, particularly watercolor painting and etching, leaving the Navy in 1838 to work full-time as an artist. In 1858, he was admitted to a mental hospital, apparently suffering from depression and hallucinations. Emotional problems would continue to plague him until his death from exhaustion and starvation in 1868. Meryon is best known for his images of the architecture of Paris, which have an atmospheric, often brooding quality.

SOURCES:

Richard S. Schneiderman, The Catalogue Raisonne of the Prints of Charles Meryon. London: Garton & Co., 1990.

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, but spent his career as a painter, printmaker, designer, and collector in England and France. As his style developed from the realism of Courbet and Manet, he became, in the 1860s, one of the leading members of the Aesthetic Movement and a leading proponent of Japonesme. He acted as an important link between the avant-garde artistic worlds of Europe and the United States. He was one of the great masters of etching, strongly influenced by Dutch art, and was one of the inspirations of the etching revival of the late nineteenth century.

SOURCES:

Dictionary of Art. Macmillan, 1996.

Anders Zorn (1860-1920), born in Mora, Sweden, was a painter, etcher, and sculptor. After early artistic training at the Kuigliga Akademi in Sweden, he traveled to London to try to establish an international career as a watercolorist. In 1887, he abandoned watercolor for oil painting, settling in Paris, gaining recognition for his portraits and nudes. His style was adapted from Impressionists including Manet and Renoir, from salon artists such as Sargent, and from the Old Masters. He started etching in England in 1882 with a technique much inspired by Rembrandt.