About the artist:

Charles Henry White was born at Hamilton, Ontario, in 1878, and was educated partly in Europe and partly in the United States. He studied for a time at the Art Student League in New York City, working at illustrations and especially pen drawing. It was Joseph Pennell, the prominent American etcher, whom Mr. White met in Venice, Italy, in 1901, who induced him to take up etching and who initiated him in the technique of the craft. He returned to America in the same year, and in 1902 he produced a set of etchings of the east side of New York which Harper's Magazine reproduced in half-tone as the first of a long series of similar articles. Mr. Whites work was strong and vigorous, and he was considered one of the most capable and masterly etchers among his contemporaries. He had a keen eye for the picturesque, and he acquired a sound reputation for his ability to reproduce a scene faithfully and with beautiful tone. His draughtsmanship and pictorial design, as well as the character of the motifs, is firmly and knowingly drawn and so solidly constructed, as to its architecture, as to be extremely satisfactory in this important respect. The little figures of people which are freely introduced, either in the foreground or farther away, are excellent in drawing, and are felicitously placed in relation to the design. He travelled extensively in Europe and the United States and produced numerous etchings of a great many cities. In 1909 he went abroad again to the cities of France and Italy. The last few years of his life were spent in fighting unsuccessfully the advances of the disease which in the end carried him off. He died at Nice in September, 1918. Mr. White made about 124 etchings, of which about forty were of European cities, and the rest of American cities. Chronologically, his entire production of etched work may be tabulated as follows: 1901 First Venice Set (3) 1907 Salem Set (5) 1902 New York East Side Set (8) 1907 Pittsburgh Set (5) 1903 New York Greenwich Village Set (5) 1908 Washington Set (5) 1904-5 New York Fulton Market Set (6) 1908 Baltimore Set (5) 1905 New York Harlem Set (6) 1908 Chicago Set (6) 1905 Philadelphia Set (5) 1909 Paris Set (7) 1906 New York "The Condemned 1909 Bruges (7) Tenement" (1) 1909 Honfleur Set (2) 1906 New Orleans Set (6) 1910 Ghent Set (1) 1906 Richmond Set (5) 1910 Ligieux Set (6) 1906 Boston Set (5) 1910 Second Venice Set (3) 1907 Charleston Set (11) 1913 San Remo Set (11)