The Prints of Joseph St. Lawerence
The Maryland Historical Society’s print collection numbers more than 5,000 lithographs, etchings and engravings spanning over 250 years of Maryland history. These include a large number of prints by major nineteenth century lithographers, including E. Sachse & Company and A. Hoen and Company, engravings from newspapers such as Harper’s Weekly, advertisements, and frakturs.
The collection also contains works by both local and non local artists. Most are realistic renderings of Maryland architecture and landscapes by artists including Don Swann, Gabrielle de Veaux Clements, James Doyle, and Erma Davis Bates. Artists whose work is more abstract are less represented. One of these is Baltimore native Joseph St. Lawerence.
Born in Baltimore in 1912, St. Lawerence began his artistic career at age 14 when he was apprenticed to a commercial decorator of churches and theaters. During World War II he served as a topographical draftsman in the U.S. Army Air Corps. An essentially self-taught printer, sculptor, and painter, St. Lawerence was one of the first to make use of dry-plate lithography invented by Baltimore printer Harry Gipe in the 1960s.
Much of St. Lawerence’s works are portraits and figures, often nudes, based on biblical sources. The Maryland Historical Society’s Joseph St. Lawerence Print Collection consists of 35 prints and lithographic plates as well as a photograph of a stainless steel silver spoon, which the artist described as “the only tool I have ever used to make Fine Art Prints.”
St. Lawerence’s work was exhibited internationally and his prints can also be found in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress. He died in his home in Baltimore in 1985. (Damon Talbot)