[4][5][6] Houston later recalled that "his construction was good from his fourteenth year, his portrait studies having bones and muscles, and reflecting a distaste for the trite prettiness so admired by earlier generations".

[7] During 1926 and 1927, he traveled in Europe, spending time in Rome and Arezzo, studying Renaissance artists, and in Paris, working at the Académie Colarossi and in a studio he rented.

[3][11][2] On his return from Europe in December 1926, Archer rented a Richmond studio that had once belonged to the sculptor, Edward Virginius Valentine.

[7][12][13][14] In 1930, a painting of Archer's called "Show Girl" won third prize in a competition held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Of it, a critic for the New York Times wrote, "'Show Girl', by Edmund Archer, is so powerful a painting, so brilliant in its contrasts of color, so sound in its drawing, that it strikes a distinct note in modern art.

In covering the show, the New York Times included a photograph of this work, labeling it "The most beautiful creation seen last week".

When Life magazine reproduced the painting in its issue for May 26, 1941, the image caption referred to Archer as "Virginia's most important contemporary artist".

[21][35][36] In 1938, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts gave him a solo exhibition that included a mural, "Captain Francis Eppes Making Friends with the Appomattox Indians", which he had made for a post office in Hopewell, Virginia, as part of the Depression-era United States post office murals project.

[37] Meant to inspire confidence at a time when many Americans felt despair, the mural, shown above, depicts an English adventurer, Francis Wayles Eppes VI, clasping the hand of the chief of the Appomattox Indians.

[38][39] A contemporary describes the painting's uplifting and romantic subject: "The Englishman and the Indian, half-reclining, face each other on a vast stretch of beach and clasp hands in a gesture of great strength and grace.

It is a wonderfully lively, noble and happy picture, from the bright virgin look of the fresh beach to the thin, symbolic line of the city of the future on the horizon".

[3] Other critics viewed Archer's heroic treatment of his subject as absurd and one of them noted that the friendly greeting that he showed between Eppes and the chief was a myth.

At the time, Archer told an interviewer that he preferred African-American models because he found in them a vitality he could not find in other figural subjects adding that he hoped American artists would take advantage of the "vitality, exuberance and color" of African-American culture to help make "great art" that would rival the art of European painters.

[3] During this exhibition, a reporter said Archer was "considered Virginia's greatest contemporary painter, and one of the best of the young artists in the United States".

[2] In 1939, a solo exhibition at the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art, Augusta, Georgia, also featured paintings of African-Americans [42] Archer left his position at the Whitney Museum in 1940 and moved to Washington, D.C., where he lived during World War II.

[43][44][45][46][47][48][49] He was given a solo exhibition of portraits at Richmond's Valentine Museum in 1957 and six years later he helped to found a gallery called the Hand Workshop Art Center, in that city.

[40][34] Edmund Archer one of the younger artists who has only recently been included in the shows held at the Rehn Galleries, contributes one of the exhibition's outstanding canvasses—a portrait study of a Negro Wrestler.

In praising these works, one critic said, "His pictures carry with them the conviction of real experience, he knows his subject and the Negroes whom he paints are people and personalities".

They are solid, harmonious and powerful masses of strong, rich humanity, and each body stands out from the canvas with actuality that is amazing".

[3] In the early 1920s, Archer performed in plays staged by the amateur company presided over by his mother and throughout his life, reporters noted his social promenence in Richmond and New York.

[10][2][55] During World War II, Archer served in the 603rd Engineering Battalion, a unit of the U.S. Army responsible for camouflage and other visual deception that was made up largely of artists, illustrators, and designers.