Earl Horter (December 8, 1880 – March 29, 1940) was an American painter, illustrator, printmaker, teacher and art collector. He was instrumental in introducing modern art to Philadelphia as both an artist and collector of Cubist and abstract art. During the 1920s, he had one of the largest collections of modern art in the United States, and he was among the most prominent etchers of his generation.
Early years and education
Earl Blumner Horter was born on December 8, 1880, to Jacob and Jeanette Horter (Blumner was her maiden name), a working-class family in Philadelphia. A student at the Germantown Boys Combined Grammar School in the 1890s, he began drawing as a young boy. As a youth, he was an apprentice to a commercial engraver and found a job designing bank notes. He was also said to be a draftsman who engraved stock certificates for the John Wanamaker department store. At age 19, he was living with his widowed mother and his occupation was listed as landscape artist on the 1900 U.S. Census. Over the years, he signed his name as “Earl” and “Earle.”
Years as an artist, 1900–1919
Horter was a self-taught artist who never attended art school. He studied etching with George Senseney, the first color etcher in the United States who taught at the Art Students League in New York. Horter was enamored with the old-master drawings he saw in museums and galleries, especially the architectural work of Italian artists Vittore Carpaccio, Giovanni Battista Piranesi and French artist Charles Meryon. He felt that he could render the changes in the architectural landscapes of Philadelphia and New York in the same dramatic way as they had done with Old World structures. He wanted to “depict this tremendous epic of new cities emerging full grown out of the chrysalis of the old.”
He was prolific during the 1920s and 1930s, producing etchings, aquatints, watercolors, oil paintings, lithographs and drawings. He was most noted for his etchings of architectural structures and city-street scenes in Philadelphia, New York and European cities. He exhibited widely in Philadelphia, New York, Chicago and other cities in shows where etchings were predominant. He was often cited in newspaper articles - even today - as one of the most important etchers in American art history. His style was likened to his contemporary Joseph Pennell as well as James Abbott Whistler.
Early on, he worked as a both a paid and freelance commercial artist. In 1903, he married the first of four wives and moved to New York. He was hired by the Calkins and Holden advertising agency based on his drafting skills. Horter worked at several other agencies, including Carlton Illustrators and the Cheltenham Advertising Agency. His first etching dates to 1908.
In 1911, the New York Edison Company commissioned Horter and two other artists, including Pennell, to produce illustrations for its book “Glimpses of New York: An Illustrated Handbook of the City.” In 1914, he created an automobile ad for the Packard ’38’ Phaeton car and was included in the “Yearbook of American Etching. As a member of the Association of American Etchers, he was represented in its exhibition in 1914 and the following year.
In 1911, he was identified in the “Annual of the Society of Illustrators” as one of the new wave of artists. He had become a member of the society the year before. He exhibited in a society show in 1913 with an etching of Pittsburgh smelters. Also that year, the Brown Robertson Company, which published prints and art reproductions, included him in a show of etchings of New York streets.
He was one of the 25 organizers of the New York Society of Illustrators in 1913 and was chosen as its secretary. He participated in its 1914 exhibition. In 1917, he helped form the Painter-Gravers of America, which promised to show nothing that had been shown before. Other members were Childe Hassam, George Bellows and John Sloan.
Horter won a silver award in etchings and engravings at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915.
He exhibited in 1915 at Keppel Galleries as part of a group exhibit. He had the first one-man show of his drawings and etchings in 1916 at Keppel. A writer for the New York Times extolled his watercolors but found his etchings uneven. Another writer hailed his works with a “Bravo."