Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 5

Samuel Chamberlain
Samuel Chamberlain, The Public Gaol, Williamsburg (Virginia)

1938

About the Item

Samuel Chamberlain was a superb draftsman and his architectural images are often very complex. This image is, by contrast, quiet and understated: serene to the point of lonely. It's a view of the 'Gaol' in Virginia's Colonial Williamsburg. More than a mere jail, a gaol was also a workhouse and/or debtor's prison -- a sad and horrific place. It was common for residents to die from the cold or contagious diseases. Signed and numbered in pencil. Titled in lower margin possibly in another hand. Reference notations on the reverse, also in another hand. Edition of 100 (probably proposed -- this isn't a common print). Here we've given the 'style' as American Modern. Probably second or third-generation Etching Revival is closer.
  • Creator:
    Samuel Chamberlain (1895-1975, American)
  • Creation Year:
    1938
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 8 in (20.32 cm)Width: 11 in (27.94 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
    Extremely good condition.
  • Gallery Location:
    New York, NY
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU141028401222
More From This SellerView All
  • Irving Guyer, Christmas Trees on Second Street (NYC)
    By Irving Guyer
    Located in New York, NY
    Philadelphia-born Irving Guyer attended the Art Students League and worked in New York City before moving to California. This print is signed and titled i...
    Category

    1930s American Modern Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Drypoint, Etching

  • Bernard Sanders, Sledding in Central Park, NYC
    Located in New York, NY
    Signed in pencil. This scene is a hundred years old but if we have snow this year it can easily be recreated.
    Category

    Early 20th Century American Modern Landscape Prints

    Materials

    Drypoint

  • Armin Landeck, Tenement Walls
    By Armin Landeck
    Located in New York, NY
    The reference number on this work is Kraeft 88. It's from an edition of 100 and is signed, dated, and numbered, in pencil. Always an intaglio printmaker, Landeck switched from a mor...
    Category

    Mid-20th Century American Modern Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Drypoint

  • Werner Drewes, 125th Street at Broadway, NYC
    By Werner Drewes
    Located in New York, NY
    Werner Drewes brought his modernist vision to this subject but created, in my opinion, a great work of the Etching Revival. The reference is Rose 183. It...
    Category

    1930s American Modern Landscape Prints

    Materials

    Drypoint

  • Fugi Nakamizo, New York Harbor from the Battery
    Located in New York, NY
    Japanese born, Fugi Nakamizo came to New York City in 1910. He studied at the Art Students League and Cooper Union, NYC, and also printmaking with Joseph Pennell. He worked on the Federal Public Works of Art Project in the 1930s and in the 40s, during WWII, was interned at the Japanese-American internment camp in Topaz, Utah. His work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NYC, and the Library of Congress and Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. This etching of New York...
    Category

    1920s American Modern Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Etching

  • Jack McClain, (Evening in the City) (NYC)
    Located in New York, NY
    A moody evening in New York City. The buildings capture the quiet that New York sometimes achieves. Signed and dated in pencil.
    Category

    Mid-20th Century American Modern Landscape Prints

    Materials

    Lithograph

You May Also Like
  • Day's End
    By Martin Lewis
    Located in Oakland, CA
    McCarron 120 iii/iii. Drypoint on wove paper, watermarked WHATMAN 1937 and ENGLAND. Edition of 34 plus 8 trial proofs, according to McCarron. Rare. Signed in pencil and inscribed “For Patricia and Martin D~ Printed especially for them by ‘le ancien’, December 1947” (Martin D and Patricia are Martin Lewis’ son and daughter-in-law. The artist, the elder of the two Martins, refers to himself as Le Ancien.). The print was awarded an honorable mention by the Philadelphia Print...
    Category

    20th Century American Modern Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Drypoint

  • Derricks at Night
    By Martin Lewis
    Located in Oakland, CA
    McCarron 62 i/ii. Drypoint on wove paper, full margins with FJ Heard & Co watermark. Edition of 104, including 3 trial proofs. Signed and inscribed “imp” in pencil. Derricks at Nigh...
    Category

    20th Century American Modern Landscape Prints

    Materials

    Drypoint

  • Guardians of the Spire; Amiens Cathedral Number 2
    By John Taylor Arms
    Located in Middletown, NY
    Guardians of the Spire; Amiens Cathedral Number 2 New York: 1937. Etching and drypoint on watermarked F.J. Head cream-colored, antique laid paper, 6 3/4 ...
    Category

    Mid-20th Century American Modern Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Drypoint, Etching

  • Tugs on the Hudson
    By Charles Frederick William Mielatz
    Located in Middletown, NY
    Drypoint etching with engraving printed in black ink on Japanese mulberry paper, 4 1/2 x 3 3/8 inches (113 x 84 mm), full margins. In superb condition. A beautiful New York City rive...
    Category

    Early 20th Century American Modern Landscape Prints

    Materials

    Handmade Paper, Drypoint, Etching

  • Low Country (South Carolina)
    By Elizabeth Verner
    Located in Middletown, NY
    An enchanting Southern landscape by the mother of the Charleston Renaissance. A native of Charleston, South Carolina, and educated under the tutelage of Thomas Anshutz at The Pennsy...
    Category

    Early 20th Century American Modern Landscape Prints

    Materials

    Archival Paper, Drypoint, Etching

  • Palazzo dell'Angelo
    By John Taylor Arms
    Located in Middletown, NY
    Palazzo dell'Angelo 1931 Etching and drypoint on cream-colored, handmade laid paper with deckle edges, 7 1/4 x 6 3/4 inches (185 x 171 mm), edition of 100, full margins. Signed, dated and numbered "Ed. 100" in pencil, lower margin, second state (of three). Printed by Henry Carling, New York. Extremely minor mat tone and some inky residue in the top right corner, all unobtrusive and well outside of image area. An exquisite impression of this intricate image, with astonishing detail, and all the fine lines printing clearly. The image represents the first print which Arms printed on his own handmade paper. Framed handsomely with archival materials and museum grade glass in a wood gilt frame with a flower and garland motif. Illustrated: Dorothy Noyes Arms, Hill Towns and Cities of Northern Italy, p. 180; Anderson, American Etchers Abroad 1880-1930; Eric Denker, Reflections & Undercurrents: Ernest Roth and Printmaking in Venice, 1900-1940, p. 116. [Fletcher 233] Born in 1887 in Washington DC, John Taylor Arms studied at Princeton University, and ultimately earned a degree in architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1912. With the outbreak of W.W.I, Arms served as an officer in the United States Navy, and it was during this time that he turned his focus to printmaking, having published his first etching in 1919. His first subjects were the Brooklyn Bridge, near the Navy Yard, and it was during his wartime travel that Arms created a series of extraordinarily detailed etchings based on Gothic cathedrals and churches he visited in France and Italy. He used what was available to him, namely sewing needles and a magnifying glass, to create the incredibly rich and fine detail that his etchings are known for. Upon his return to New York after the war, Arms enjoyed a successful career as a graphic artist, created a series of etchings of American cities, and published Handbook of Print Making and Print Makers (Macmillan, 1934). He served as President of the Society of American Graphic Artists, and in 1933, was made a full member of the National Academy of Design. In its most modern incarnation, Palazzo dell'Angelo was constructed in or around 1570. The building, which has a rich and storied history, was erected upon the ruins of an earlier structure which predates the Gothic period. Some remnants of the earliest features of the residence were most certainly still visible when Arms visited, as they are today. Having a background in architecture, there's no question that Arms was moved by the beauty, history and ingenuity represented in the physical structure. One thing specifically gives away Arms's passion for the architecture, and that is the fact that he focused on the building's Moorish entranceway, balustrade, and two mullioned windows, and not on the curious Gothic era bas-relief of an angel nestled into the facade of the building, after which the structure is named. The sculpture itself doesn't appear in Arms's composition at all, despite the fact that it is the feature of the building that is most famous in its folklore. Arms instead focuses on the oldest portion of the architecture, even documenting some of the remnants of a fresco, and a funerary stele for the freedman Tito Mestrio Logismo, and his wife Mestria Sperata (visible above the water level, to the left of the door, behind the gondola), which was first described in 1436. Among the many notable bits of history regarding the Palazzo, it has been documented that Tintoretto painted frescos of battle scenes on the facade of the building. The paintings have been lost to time and the elements, but not entirely to history. The empty frame...
    Category

    1930s American Modern Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Drypoint, Etching

Recently Viewed

View All

The 1stDibs Promise

Learn More

Expertly Vetted Sellers

Confidence at Checkout

Price-Match Guarantee

Exceptional Support

Buyer Protection

Trusted Global Delivery