Edith Loring Getchell

American landscape painter and etcher, 1855–1940

BiographyEdith Loring Peirce Getchell (1855–1940) was an American landscape painter and etcher, highly regarded for her etchings, drypoints and watercolors. Working during the "American Etching Revival," a period that lent legitimacy to an art form that had once been scorned as commercial. Considered one of America's leading etchers in her lifetime, Getchell's work is notable for its skill, its aesthetic values and its approach to depicting the American landscape. Getchell studied painting, printmaking and textile design at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, now Moore College of Art and Design. One of her teachers there was William Sartain and another was Peter Moran, best known for his etchings of animal subjects, and for his brothers Thomas and Edward who were also professional artists. At the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA), Getchell studied with landscape painter Robert Swain Gifford. While at PAFA, she also studied with realist Thomas Eakins, who would later paint a well-received portrait of Getchell's husband. As a private student, Getchell also studied with landscape painter and etcher Stephen Parrish, with whom she later exhibited alongside artist Mary Cassatt. Getchell was one of only two women included in a book on America's 25 leading American etchers in 1886. The following year she was invited to exhibit in "'Women Etchers of America,' the earliest comprehensive exposure of the work of women artists by an American institution" — and an historic first. That year, she was also accepted into the nearly all-male New York Etching Club, which her teacher Robert Swain Gifford had helped found.

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