Herman Armour Webster

Born in 1878 in New York City, Herman Armour Webster went on to The Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University and upon graduation he sailed to Europe to attend the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris. He reached Chicago in, 1901, and revealed to his family a desire to pursue the artist’s life in Paris. After spending two years unsuccessfully pursuing a business career in America, Webster enrolled at the Académie Julian, where he joined the studio of Jean-Paul Laurens, the Paris academician and professor at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts. He met Donald Shaw MacLaughlan and became interested in etching after viewing a portfolio of prints made by the visionary French artist Charles Méryon. Webster also took lessons from French printmaker Eugène Béjot.

His reputation grew quickly with the issuance of additional prints, and in 1907 Webster was made an Associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers in London, as well as a member of both the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and the National Academy of Design. In 1915 Webster was awarded the Gold Medal at The Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco.

Herman Armour Webster died in Paris in 1970. In 1974 his personal papers, reference articles, correspondence, and estate prints were placed in the Archives of American Art, at the Smithsonian Institution, as part of a commemorative exhibition of his work held by the National Collection of Fine Arts, and are preserved as an archive.