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Becher, Arthur Ernst (1877-1960) |
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 Arthur Ernst Becher was born in Freiberg, Germany and moved to Milwaukee in 1885 with his parents. After graduating from high school, he worked in a commercial lithography house and studied art with F.W. Heine and Robert Schade. In 1899 Becher and several other young Milwaukee artists, including Edward Steichen, Carl Sandburg, Herman Pfeifer, and William Aylward, organized a sketching club, with the painter Louis Mayer as the group's teacher. Becher and Aylward attended the 1903 summer school in Chadds Ford and the regular school that fall. According to Thornton Oakley's notes, Becher was studying with Pyle in the fall of 1902. In the spring of 1903 he occupied a studio at 1607 Broom Street and then moved to the 804 Orange Street studio building.
In 1904 Becher and Frieda Knappe, from Milwaukee, were married and settled in Ardsley, New York. In 1908 Appleton's Magazine sent him to London to draw some prehistoric objects in the British Museum collection, and, while in Europe, he took the opportunity to study with Leopold 0. Strutzel in Munich. He exhibited the paintings he did in Europe at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1910 and 1911.
Around 1916 he moved to Fishkill, New York, where he did some farming in addition to his work as an illustrator. He was a founding member of the New York Guild of Illustrators and a member of the Society of Illustrators and the Salmagundi Club In the 1930s the amount of magazine illustration he did decreased and was replaced by novel and school text illustration and religious pictures for Sunday School distribution. In 1931 and 1939 he spent time in Arizona, where he painted a number of landscapes. He also painted many landscapes around Fishkill.
Becher was not as specialized in his subject matter as some Pyle pupils were, although American historical and contemporary domestic scenes appear often in his work. His work in color is distinguished by his unusually good sense of color harmony. His black and white work was usually done in lithographic pencil with heightening in white gouache. Except for the late landscapes, his work is almost always signed and dated The faces of his characters are highly individualized and drawn with great precision. |
Pyle Students' Bios