American Monotypes from the Baker/Pisano Collection | Page 23

Albion Harris Bicknell (American, 1837–1915)
The Lake, n.d.

Monotype, 10 1/8 x 5 6/8 in.
Chazen Museum of Art, gift of D. Frederick Baker from the
Baker/Pisano Collection, 2014.6.1

Landscape with Boat, n.d.

Monotype, 10 10/16 x 17 7/8 in.
Chazen Museum of Art, gift of D. Frederick Baker from the
Baker/Pisano Collection, 2014.17

Albion Bicknell was given credit by the Malden City Press in
1881 for inventing the monotype. This wasn’t wholly accurate
since the process dates back to the seventeenth century begun
by Giovanni Castiglione in Italy. Still Bicknell was one of the
earliest American practitioners of the process, and an exhibition
of eighty-two of his monotypes shown at the J. Eastman Chase
Gallery in Boston in November, 1881, was one of the earliest
one-man exhibitions of monotypes in America. His only rival
at the time was the American artist Charles Alvah Walker
who had coined the term “monotype” around 1880 or 1881.
NOTES:
Craven, “Albion Harris Bicknell,” 443–449.
Moser, Singular Impressions, 22–23.

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