A Homemade Etching

This is the first - and so far as I can tell, the last - etching by the Boston-based marine painter Walter Franklin Lansil. We know exactly how it was executed, from a description by Sylvester Rosa Koehler, the first curator of prints at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston. Koehler writes: "It is eminently 'home-made.' The ground was prepared according to the recipe given; the points used were a sewing-needle and a knitting-needle; the tray in which it was etched was made of paper covered with stopping-out varnish; even the plate (a zink plate, by the way) did not come from the plate-maker, but was ground and polished at home."
Walter Franklin Lansil, Ships in Boston HarborEtching, 1879
Walter Franklin Lansil was born in Bangor, Maine, in 1846. He studied originally under J. P. Hardy in Bangor, alongside his younger brother Wilbur. In 1872 the brothers moved to Boston, which remained their base. However in 1888 they headed for Paris, to study at the Académie Julian. Walter F. Lansil was profoundly influenced not by the Impressionists but by their precursors, the plein-air artists of the Barbizon School, and also by the Barbizon painter of Venice, Félix Ziem. Although the bulk of Walter Lansil's work reflects his home territory on the coast of New England, he continued to visit and paint Venice for the rest of his life. Ships in Boston Harbor (also known as Vessels in Boston Harbor) was made in 1879, before his time in Paris, but already shows the Barbizon influence. Walter Franklin Lansil died in 1925.