Frederick Warren Sr

A landscape painter strongly influenced by the French Impressionists, Alson Skinner Clark spent much of his career traveling and living in foreign countries and then settled in Southern California where he became a plein-aire painter, art educator and muralist. From there, he also traveled extensively in Mexico and the Southwest. Alson Clark was born in Chicago to a prosperous family comfortably supported by the father's commodities business. He showed early art talent, which his family encouraged by enrolling him in evening classes at the Art Institute. They also took him on a two-year trip around the world where he gained much exposure to European art. Graduating from high school, he again enrolled at the Art Institute but unhappy with his teacher, he left after six months, and in 1896, went to New York to study with William Merritt Chase at the Art Students League. He also followed Chase to his own school, which opened shortly after, and enrolled in the Chase summer school of plein-aire painting at Shinnecock. In 1898, Alson Clark went to Paris where he was a student for several months at the Academie Carmen, whose director was James McNeill Whistler. Although Whistler was a difficult, demanding personality, Clark respected his teaching, stayed at the school until it closed, and ever acknowledged Whistler's influence on his Impressionist style. In 1901, Clark returned to America and married Atta Medora McMullin, whom he met when she modeled for him at Comfort Island, near Watertown, New York, his family's vacation spot. From 1902 to 1914, they lived in Paris until the war broke out, and during that time, he took up plein-air painting. The couple also spent time at Giverny in 1910, and Clark painted with his friends Lawton Parker, Guy Rose, and Frederick Frieseke. Traveling extensively throughout Europe, the Clarks were supported by successful sales from galleries representing his work in New York and Chicago. Exhibition venues included the National Academy of Design, Pennsylvania Academy, Paris Salon and Art Institute of Chicago. His work included many landscapes, cityscapes, interiors, and figure studies especially of his wife, who continued to serve as his model.

Decorating with fine art prints — whether they’re figurative prints, abstract prints or another variety — has always been a practical way of bringing a space to life as well as bringing works by an artist you love into your home.

Pursued in the 1960s and ’70s, largely by Pop artists drawn to its associations with mass production, advertising, packaging and seriality, as well as those challenging the primacy of the Abstract Expressionist brushstroke, printmaking was embraced in the 1980s by painters and conceptual artists ranging from David Salle and Elizabeth Murray to Adrian Piper and Sherrie Levine.

Printmaking is the transfer of an image from one surface to another. An artist takes a material like stone, metal, wood or wax, carves, incises, draws or otherwise marks it with an image, inks or paints it and then transfers the image to a piece of paper or other material.

Fine art prints are frequently confused with their more commercial counterparts. After all, our closest connection to the printed image is through mass-produced newspapers, magazines and books, and many people don’t realize that even though prints are editions, they start with an original image created by an artist with the intent of reproducing it in a small batch. Fine art prints are created in strictly limited editions — 20 or 30 or maybe 50 — and are always based on an image created specifically to be made into an edition.

Many people think of revered Dutch artist Rembrandt as a painter but may not know that he was a printmaker as well. His prints have been preserved in time along with the work of other celebrated printmakers such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol. These fine art prints are still highly sought after by collectors.

“It’s another tool in the artist’s toolbox, just like painting or sculpture or anything else that an artist uses in the service of mark making or expressing him- or herself,” says International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) vice president Betsy Senior, of New York’s Betsy Senior Fine Art, Inc.

Because artist’s editions tend to be more affordable and available than his or her unique works, they’re more accessible and can be a great opportunity to bring a variety of colors, textures and shapes into a space.

For tight corners, select small fine art prints as opposed to the oversized bold piece you’ll hang as a focal point in the dining area. But be careful not to choose something that is too big for your space. And feel free to lean into it if need be — not every work needs picture-hanging hooks. Leaning a larger fine art print against the wall behind a bookcase can add a stylish installation-type dynamic to your living room. (Read more about how to arrange wall art here.)

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