Chauncey Ryder Etching

In 1907, Ryder moved to New York City, where he was represented for the rest of his career by art dealer William Macbeth. His landscapes were admired for their vigorous brushwork, and the degree to which he pushed representational elements towards abstraction. He became known for a palette of predominantly gray-green tones, eventually known as 'Ryder green'. He opened a studio in the city in 1909, and the following year bought property in Wilton, New Hampshire. For the remainder of his life, he divided his time between New York and New Hampshire. In 1910, he traveled throughout New England, providing locales for many of his subsequent paintings. That year, future president Woodrow Wilson and his wife Ellen bought one of his landscapes, Valley of Assisi, to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. Ryder was a member of several art associations, including the American Water Color Society and the Society for Sanity in Art. Among his awards were the Paris Salon (honorable mention, 1907), the American Water Color Society (gold medal), the National Arts Club (gold medal), and the New York Water Color Society (gold medal). He also received awards at the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition and the 1937 Paris International Exposition. Ryder died in Wilton, NH in 1949. His work is in the collections of numerous American museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D.C.), the Art Institute of Chicago (Illinois), and the Baltimore Museum of Art (Maryland)

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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