Edith Loring Peirce Getchell

Career Getchell was one of only two women included in a book on America's 25 leading American etchers in 1886. The following year she was invited to exhibit in "'Women Etchers of America,' the earliest comprehensive exposure of the work of women artists by an American institution" — and an historic first. That year, she was also accepted into the nearly all-male New York Etching Club, which her teacher Robert Swain Gifford had helped found.

Over the next several years, Getchell's work was frequently reproduced in print, widely acquired by American art museums and exhibited in London, Paris and across the United States.

Atlanta's High Museum of Art organized an exhibition revisiting the "American Women of the Etching Revival" in 1988. Curator Phyllis Peet cited a 1902 review to describe her:he work of Edith Loring Getchell is vigorous, original and effective without affectation. . . . Her hand is particularly sympathetic to all that is beautiful in foliation and growth of trees, atmospheric or climatic conditions of light, and those subtleties of nature best adapted to expression with the point. ’ — Will Jenkins, Modern Etching and Engraving in America. One of her teachers there was tonalist William Sartain. Another was Peter Moran, best known for his etchings of animal subjects, and for brothers Thomas and Edward who were also professional artists.

At the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA), Getchell studied with landscape painter Robert Swain Gifford who was influenced by the more realist, and less romantic, approach to painting of the Barbizon school. At PAFA, she also studied with realist Thomas Eakins, who would later paint a well-received portrait of Getchell's husband As a private student, Getchell also studied with landscape painter and etcher Stephen Parrish, with whom she later exhibited alongside artist Mary Cassatt. National Gallery of Art, Washington Princeton University Art Museum Smithsonian American Art Museum University of Arizona Museum of Art Wentworth Military Academy Museum Worcester Art Museum University Art Collection, Georgetown The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College Museum of Art, University of New Hampshire

Publications

American etchings: A collection of twenty original etchings by Moran, Parrish, Ferris, Smillie, and others; with descriptive text and biographical matter. Boston: Estes and Lauriat: January 1, 1885 ASIN : B00086AUHE Gems of American Etchers. New York: Cassell, c1885. (Sirsi) ACO-0770 62653 Union League Club, Exhibition Catalogue of the Work of Women Etchers of America. New York: Frederick Keppel & Company Philadelphia Art Union. New York: Frederick Keppel & Company.

Commissions

Philadelphia: Robert M. Lindsay San Francisco: W.K. Vickery Union League Club: Cover of the "Women Etchers of America" exhibition catalogue

Gallery