St. Olaf College

Otto Henry Bacher

Contemporary painter, etcher, illustrator
United States
1865 - 1909

View objects by this artist.

Henry Otto Bacher was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1856. He began his schooling in the Cleveland Public Schools, and started his artistic career as a decorator for local mansions and een lake vessels. In 1874, he began to study art under De Scott Evans, and became one of the founders of the Art Club (also known as the Old Bohemians, and the City Hall Colony) alongside Archibald Willard in 1876. Bacher was one of the forst artists from Cleveland to visit Europe, traveling in 1878 with Willis Seaver Adams and Sion Wenban.

While in Europe, Bacher studied at Royal Academy in Munich and met Cincinatti artist  Frank Duveneck. He chose to follow Duveneck to Italy, where he befriended James MacNeill Whistler. Whistler was known to have printed a few of his Venetian etchings on Bacher’s press.

During the 1880s, Bacher returned twice to Cleveland. He taught at the Art Club, and then during the summer moved to teach in Richfield, Ohio. In 1888, he married a former Cleveland art student named Mary Holland, and the two settled in New York City. He was best known for his etchings -- in his early career, those depicting Cleveland, and by the late 1880s he had begun to take on Impressionist ideals, particularly the preoccupation with light -- he did also occasionally work in paints. He passed away in Bronxville, New York, in 1909.


Madison Duran ‘20
February 2020

Sources:
“BACHER, OTTO HENRY.” Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve
University, 11 May 2018, https://case.edu/ech/articles/b/bacher-otto-henry.
“Otto Henry Bacher 'Arachne'.” Metmuseum.org, The Met,
www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/365941.

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Henry_Bacher#/media/File:Bacher-Selfportrait.jpg