Howard Cook American (1901-1980) West Side, New York City, 12th Avenue, 1931 engraving and aquatint edition of 50, pencil signed and dated lower margin. Howard Norton Cook, printmaker, painter, and muralist - was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on July 16, 1901. He studied painting and drawing at the Art Students League on a scholarship from 1919 to 1921 and returned to the League in 1922 to study etching under Joseph Pennell. He liked to travel and spent most of the mid-twenties traveling and sketching. In 1922 he was in Europe, 1923 the Far East, 1925 the Middle East and Europe, and in 1926 worked on a passenger ship that ran between New York and San Francisco. He then traveled as an illustrator for Forum Magazine to Santa Fe, New Mexico. While in Taos, New Mexico, he met and married Barbara Latham, a fellow New England artist. He had his first one-man exhibition at the Denver Art Museum in 1927. Over the next two decades, he had over twenty one-man shows in New York, Texas, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Cook was a master printmaker working in etching, aquatint, lithography, woodcut, and wood engraving. He printed his own images with the exception of the lithographs which were printed by George Miller and other experienced craftsmen. Although he visited New York City often, New Mexico was home. His works from the Southwest are images of pueblos and wonderful rock formations of the region. 8"H x 13 1/2"W (image), 15"H x 20"W (frame)