Herman Armour Webster

His father, George Huntington Webster, was a partner in the New York division of the Armour business interests of Chicago; and it was as a sign of appreciation and respect that he named his child after his benefactors.

Over the next two years Webster would reside in Paris; contend with a bout of typhoid fever in Berlin; trek the Russian steppes on the Trans-Siberian Railway; puzzle over the mysteries of the Orient while visiting Beijing, Nagasaki, Yokohama, and Tokyo; and ultimately return home via the Pacific.

His reputation grew quickly with the issuance of additional prints, and in 1907 Webster was made an associate of The Royal Society of Painter-Etchers in London, as well as a member of both the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and the National Academy of Design.

He stayed long enough to make a series of drawings and at least one etching that captured the changing shape and structure of the city, and arranged for representation with the New York publisher and dealer Frederick Keppel & Company.

[9] His eyesight was severely impaired forcing him to abandon the close, detailed work of etching in favor of watercolor and ink wash painting for a period of nearly ten years.

His technique was orthodox Beaux Arts, using transparent layers of sepia ink or colored paint to suggest rather than depict a scene, and one cannot help but be reminded of the pen and brush fresco studies of Tiepolo.