Albion Bicknell

Bicknell was a pupil of Thomas Couture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1850. He returned to Boston in 1857, and became a successful painter. Bicknell began making monotypes in 1881, among the first made in America. He claimed to have invented the process, but so did Charles Alvah Walker, and this point remained in dispute between the two artists, who knew each other. Bicknell's monotype subjects were landscapes, usually in a single brown or blackish-brown ink, and showing the influence of the Barbizon School, but centered around the Malden, Massachusetts area where he lived. (Monotypes of the 19th & 20th Centuries, exh. cat., Frederick Baker Inc., Chicago, 2007.)

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