Otto H. Bacher

b. 1856 — d. 1909

Painter and printmaker Otto Bacher was the first artist from Cleveland to earn international renown in the art world. Born in Cleveland, Bacher grew up in a neighborhood bordering the east bank of the Cuyahoga River near the mouth of Lake Erie. A childhood pastime of sketching shipping activities in the busy port eventually led to a job painting inscriptions on commercial vessels. He became interested in art during his teen years and studied with De Scott Evans and also learned from Willis Seaver Adams and Sion Wenban. In 1876 Bacher helped found the Art Club and had a solo show at the Kemmer and Kushman Decorating Company. The following year he had his second solo exhibition, at J. W. Sargeant’ s Art Shop. He traveled to Europe in 1878, attended the Munich Royal Academy, and studied with Cincinnati native Frank Duveneck in Munich, Florence, and Venice. A chance meeting in Venice with James A. McNeill Whistler in 1880 led to a long friendship that had a decisive effect on Bacher’ s etching style. In 1883 Bacher returned to Cleveland and began teaching at the Cleveland Academy of Art and privately at a summer retreat he organized in Richfield, Ohio. He returned to Europe in 1885, hoping to stay for an extended period, but his financial situation forced him to come back to America. After a brief visit to Cleveland, Bacher settled in New York City. To support himself, he did illustrations for Century Magazine in 1888. In 1895 he moved to Bronxville, New York, and by that time his artistic style revealed a strong debt to impressionism. During the last two decades of his life, he exhibited in New York, London, Paris, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. Bacher died in Bronxville. "Transformations in Cleveland Art" (CMA, 1996), p. 222.