Shark Rock

Art Historical Context

**Shark Rock** by Kerr Eby, created around 1941, captures a rugged coastal vignette in the medium of graphic arts print—likely an etching, for which Eby was renowned. As a master printmaker associated with the American realist tradition, Eby excelled at rendering dramatic landscapes and everyday scenes with meticulous detail and atmospheric depth. This work, now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum thanks to a gift from Mrs. Harry Katz, evokes New England's rocky shores, featuring a lone male figure fishing from a small boat amid jagged rocks, with a gull overhead. The print's timing, on th...

About the Artist

Kerr Eby

Kerr Eby (1889–1946) was a Canadian-born American printmaker and painter who became one of the most accomplished etchers of his generation and a powerful chronicler of the experience of war. Born in Tokyo to Canadian parents, he grew up in New York and studied at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League under George Bridgman. Eby volunteered for service in World War I and saw action in Fra...