Admiral Sir Ernle Chatfield, British Navy

Art Historical Context

This drypoint portrait by Walter Tittle presents Admiral Sir Ernle Chatfield, a distinguished officer in the British Navy, rendered in 1921. Measuring 12 by 10 inches on the plate, the work is executed in black ink and belongs to the National Gallery of Art’s prints collection, where it was donated by the artist’s wife, Mrs. Walter Tittle. Created in the years following the First World War, the image captures a naval leader at a moment when maritime power and strategy remained central to international affairs. Drypoint, the technique employed here, involves scratching directly into a metal pl...

About the Artist

Walter Tittle

Walter Tittle was an American illustrator, portraitist, and printmaker who built a distinguished career in the early decades of the twentieth century, working across the overlapping worlds of magazine illustration, literary portraiture, and fine art printmaking. Born in Springfield, Ohio, he studied at the Art Students League of New York, an institution that provided rigorous training in drawing a...