Samuel Chamberlain Printmaker

Samuel V. Chamberlain, printmaker, photographer, author, lecturer, and teacher was born in Cresco, Iowa on October 28, 1895. His family moved to Aberdeen, Washington in 1901 and, in 1913, Chamberlain enrolled in the University of Washington in Seattle where he studied architecture under Carl Gould. By 1915, he was enrolled in the School of Architecture of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. With the United States' involvement in the First World War, Chamberlain sailed to France where he volunteered in the American Field Service. In 1918, he was transferred to the United States Army to complete his tour of duty. After the war, he returned to Boston and resumed his architectural studies, which he eventually discontinued and tried for a few years to work as a commercial artist. Chamberlain received the American Field Service Scholarship in 1923, which he used to travel in Spain, North Africa, and Italy. In 1924 he was living in Paris and in the spring he studied lithography with Gaston Dorfinant and in the autumn and winter months, he studied etching and drypoint with Edouard Léon. He published his first etching the following year. In 1927, he studied drypoint with Malcolm Osborne at the Royal College of Art in London. He taught part-time at the School of Architecture, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and the School of Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology between his travels abroad. Chamberlain eventually settled for a dozen years in France. He authored and sometimes co-authored, with his wife Narcissa, Domestic Architecture of Rural France, Clementine in the Kitchen, New England Rooms 1639-1863, and Charleston Interiors. Chamberlain was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Institute of Architects, the American Society of the French Legion of Honor, the Boston Camera Club, the Boston Printmakers, the Chicago Society of Etchers, Photographic Society of America, the Print Club of Albany, the Society of American Etchers, and was elected an Academician in the National Academy of Design. His work is represented in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Library of Congress, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Academy Museum, the Harvard Art Museums, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Samuel V. Chamberlain died in Marblehead, Massachusetts on January 10, 1975.

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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