Ruelle du Pêcheur
Medium
Etching in black on cream wove paper
Dimensions
Image/plate: 21.8 × 14.9 cm (8 5/8 × 5 7/8 in.); Sheet: 23.5 × 16.5 cm (9 5/16 × 6 1/2 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
46556
Art Historical Context
**Ruelle du Pêche (Fisherman's Alley)**, etched by Donald Shaw MacLaughlan in 1902, invites visitors into the charming, narrow lanes of a coastal French village. This intimate print, measuring just 21.8 × 14.9 cm, captures the quiet poetry of everyday European life at the turn of the century. MacLaughlan, a-American artist trained in Paris, was renowned for his lyrical etchings that evoke a sense of nostalgic wanderlust, influenced by the etching revival led by masters like James McNeill Whistler. Rendered in black ink on cream wove paper, the work exemplifies the precision of etching—a labor...
About the Artist
Donald Shaw MacLaughlan
Donald Shaw MacLaughlan (1876–1938) was born on November 9 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, though he is recognized as an American artist after his family relocated to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1890. There, as a teenager, he immersed himself in the Boston Public Library's collections of old master prints, studying works by Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, and eighteenth-century E...