The Little Forge
Medium
Etching in black on Japanese paper
Dimensions
Image/plate: 15 × 14.3 cm (5 15/16 × 5 11/16 in.); Sheet: 16.5 × 16.2 cm (6 1/2 × 6 7/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
46518
Art Historical Context
Donald Shaw MacLaughlan's *The Little Forge* (1902) is a exquisite example of early 20th-century printmaking, housed in the Art Institute of Chicago's Prints and Drawings department. This intimate etching, with an image size of just 15 × 14.3 cm on delicate Japanese paper, captures a quaint scene likely evoking the warmth and rhythm of a small blacksmith's workshop. Printed in rich black ink, the work's modest scale draws visitors in for a personal encounter, highlighting MacLaughlan's skill in rendering everyday subjects with poetic subtlety. Etching, the medium here, is an intaglio techniqu...
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...