Evening

George Elbert Burr

George Elbert Burr moved to Denver, Colorado in 1906 for health reasons. He spent the next 18 years there creating a body of intaglio prints that focused on the desert and mountain landscapes of the southwest.

In this composition Burr focused his attention on a dead tree, standing by a river in the American southwestern high desert as the evening sets. Using a blue/black ink and aquatint and etchig he has created a dark, intense forground. Transitioned by delicate drypoint at the horizom he has carefully used a thin aquatint leaving a thin layer of ink while wiping clean some clouds, visible on the horizon. In another 15 minutes the whole scene will be dark.

Critic/printmaker Arthur Millier notes in "American Etchers" monograph "George Elbert Burr, 1930, page 3 of his essay, discussing Burr's techniques: "When he etches his beautiful "Evening", with dark trees on a quiet river, he confounds the dogma of purists by uniting the most velvety drypoint witha delicate sky tone that seems to be aquatint. Puristically he is dead wrong but actually his entirely right. He is not working to please professors of art but to express what he feels in nature and he hit on just the right combination of copper plate techniques to achieve his end."

Burr used the title "Evening" for a number of his prints, doing these compositions throughout the west and southwest, using different intaglio media and different formats.