Bryan Garner has recovered a lost master
Bryan Garner has performed a remarkable act of cultural recovery with his vigorously written new book, The Etcher: The Life and Art of Oskar Stoessel, a long-forgotten Austrian artist who had total mastery of his form and deep understanding of the human face. Stoessel (1879-1964) attained success in the US in the 1940s after fleeing from the Nazis in 1938 with the help of US Minister to Austria, George Messersmith, who introduced him to elite American circles. Stoessel went on to etch portraits of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull, among many others, and exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC. He found his greatest supporters and subjects in the Supreme Court – he sketched all the sitting justices in 1941 and more in subsequent years.
