The Etcher: The Life and Art of Oskar Stoessel

Lawyer Garner (Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage) uncovers in this scrupulous biography the life of artist and etcher Oskar Stoessel. Born in 1879 Austria, Stoessel passed the notoriously difficult entrance exam for the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (the same year Adolf Hitler failed to gain admittance), where he honed his etching skills, later forging connections with giants like Gustav Klimt and building a roster of famous subjects, including authors, actors, and diplomats. In 1939, he and his brother were driven by Hitler’s rise to immigrate to New York. George Messersmith, an American diplomat who’d commissioned a portrait from Stoessel, helped the artist establish connections, arranging portrait sessions with Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Stoessel’s depiction was said to be Eleanor Roosevelt’s favorite) and numerous Supreme Court justices. Still, antisemitism in the art world kept Stoessel from achieving real renown, according to Garner; at 80, he returned to Austria and died four years later. Garner studiously digs through Stoessel’s correspondences with Supreme Court justices to meticulously track the artist’s career in America, setting it against an uneasy postwar atmosphere in which eagerness to move past the conflict often led to open xenophobia. The result is a worthy resurrection of a little-known artist. (Oct.)