Title: Cornwall.
Artist: Kerr Eby (1889-1946).
Etching, 1927.
Edition c.150.
Signed in pencil. Titled and dated in plate.
Published by The Brooklyn Society of Etchers.
Image size 12 11/16 x 19" (32.3 x 48.2 cm).

#120 in "Kerr Eby: The Complete Prints" by Bernadette Passi Giardina.

Kerr Eby was a Canadian printmaker born in Tokyo, Japan, where his father was working as a missionary. Eby is perhaps best known for his war images, having served in both World Wars. He moved to the United States at the age of eighteen and took up study at Pratt Institute and the Art Students League of New York. He enlisted in the Army in 1917, where he served in the Ambulance Corp before being transferred to the Army Corps of Engineers. His drawings and memories of the World War I resulted in many well-known etchings and lithographs, which he produced after his return.

Yale University Press published his book "War" in 1936, in which Eby discussed his abhorrence for war, and used his drawings and prints to illustrate what he and his fellow soldier had gone through during the Great War. The book came as a result of the growing tension in Europe and the threat of World War II lingering on the horizon.

Despite his feelings about war, Eby willing enlisted in World War II. Initially deemed too old for service, he was eventually taken on as a combat artist under the Abbott Laboratories program and served in the Pacific Theater. Sadly, World War II would spell the end for Eby, not through combat but disease. He contracted a tropical illness while serving in Bougainville and died of complications at his home in Norwalk, Connecticut in 1946.

Condition: Fair condition with discoloration in the margins.