41. John Winkler
(1894-1979)
Oriental Shop

(click on image to print)
Winkler: Oriental Shop

Oriental Shop

Etching, 1916, 122 x 175 mm., Winkler 18. Many years ago the name John Winkler almost always elicited the response, "America's greatest etcher." Nowadays, he is virtually a forgotten man. But Winkler, who created Whistler-like etchings probably before he had ever seen a Whistler etching, and who was producing high-quality and individual prints of urban scenes as early as Sloan and Hassam and well before Marsh, Arms or Lewis is hardly an artist to be forgotten. His best work is of San Francisco, the wharves and Chinatown. Like Whistler, working directly on the plate with no preliminary pencil drawing, he evoked scene and mood with sympathetic humor and his images bring to us a place and life-style that survive today only fragmentarily. He drew beautifully, if idiosyncratically, and etched expertly. At today's prices, his prints are cheap for the quality. A fine impression on cream wove paper with full margins, signed in pencil.