American Monotypes from the Baker/Pisano Collection | Page 69

Charles Alvah Walker (American, 1848–1920)
Landscape with Lily Pond, ca. 1895

Monotype, 10 5/16 x 14 3/16 in.
Chazen Museum of Art, gift of D. Frederick Baker from the
Baker/Pisano Collection, 2014.6.15

It was Charles Alvah Walker who came up with the term
“monotype” to describe the process that he claimed to have
accidentally discovered in 1877 while proofing an etching on
his printing press. This is a tall tale or he was unfamiliar with
concurrent monotype developments in both Paris and Munich.
Walker can, however, lay claim to being the first American to
exhibit monotypes—at Doll & Richards Galleries, Boston,
in the fall of 1881. Along with Albion Bicknell who had an
exhibition of eighty-two monotypes at the J. Eastman Chase
Gallery in Boston in November that same year, Walker and
Bicknell both share the title of earliest exhibitors of monotypes
in America. While monotypes are generally small, Walker, in
1894, made a monotype two feet in height and three feet in
width—surely the largest monotype ever made to date. Walker,
like Bicknell, was greatly influenced by the French Barbizon
artists as their early monotypes were primarily of landscapes.
NOTES:
Moser, Singular Impressions, 22–24.

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