Nick Biddle

Born to a prominent family in Philadelphia on January 24, 1885, George Biddle put his interest in art aside to accommodate his family's wishes and study law. He graduated from Harvard University in 1908 and Harvard Law in 1911, becoming a member of the Philadelphia bar. However, by the end of that same year, Biddle abandoned law and began studying art at the Académie Julian in Paris. Biddle continued his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts during 1912 and 1913. He returned to Europe in 1914, studying in Munich and then in Madrid, where he studied printmaking. Biddle also spent the summers of 1915 and 1916 painting Impressionist works in France before he enlisted in the army in 1917. Following World War I, Biddle experimented in sculpture and graphics in Tahiti for two years and then in France between 1924–26. In 1927, Biddle returned to the United States settling in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. The following year, he traveled through Mexico on a sketching trip with Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera. During the Great Depression, Biddle actively sought government funding for the arts. His correspondence with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was a former classmate at Groton Preparatory School and Harvard, resulted in the establishment of the Federal Arts Project of the Works Progress Administration. The Depression fueled Biddle's desire to create socially conscious art. He established himself as a Social Realist through powerful murals depicting poverty. The Tenement, which he created in 1935 for the Department of Justice Building in Washington, D.C., was his first federally commissioned mural. The project led to controversy as people deemed his depiction of poverty to be inartistic. In addition to his artwork, Biddle authored several art books including An Artist at War and An American Artist's Story and he contributed regularly to national art magazines. In 1937, Biddle wrote the introduction for Boardman Robinson: Ninety-Three Drawings which was published by the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, where he taught in 1936 and 1937. In addition to teaching in Colorado, Biddle later taught at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, the American Academy in Rome and Saugatuck, Michigan. He served as a chairman of the U.S. War Artists Committee during World War II and in 1950, President Truman appointed him to the Fine Arts Commission for which he served a 14-year term. Biddle died on November 6, 1973, in Croton-on-Hudson.

Realist art attempts to portray its subject matter without artifice. Similar to naturalism, authentic realist paintings and prints see an integration of true-to-life colors, meticulous detail and linear perspectives for accurate portrayals of the world. 

Work that involves illusionistic techniques of realism dates back to the classical world, such as the deceptive trompe l’oeil used since ancient Greece. Art like this became especially popular in the 17th century when Dutch artists like Evert Collier painted objects that appeared real enough to touch. Realism as an artistic movement, however, usually refers to 19th-century French realist artists such as Honoré Daumier exploring social and political issues in biting lithographic prints, while the likes of Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet painting people — particularly the working class — with all their imperfections, navigating everyday urban life. This was a response to the dominant academic art tradition that favored grand paintings of myth and history. 

By the turn of the 20th century, European artists, such as the Pre-Raphaelites, were experimenting with nearly photographic realism in their work, as seen in the attention to every botanical attribute of the flowers surrounding the drowned Ophelia painted by English artist John Everett Millais.

Although abstraction was the guiding style of 20th-century art, the realism trend in American modern art endured in Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth and other artists’ depictions of the complexities of the human experience. In the late 1960s, Photorealism emerged with artists like Chuck Close and Richard Estes giving their paintings the precision of a frame of film.

Contemporary artists such as Jordan Casteel, LaToya Ruby Frazier and Aliza Nisenbaum are now using the unvarnished realist approach for honest representations of people and their worlds. Alongside traditional mediums, technology such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence and immersive installations are helping artists create new sensations of realism in art.

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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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