Kerr Eby, born Tokyo, Japan 1889-died - Shadows - 1936 - T-Shirt

Shadows is an etching by American printmaker and war artist Kerr Eby that turns a wartime scene of marching soldiers, a mounted officer and a ruined building into a study of light and dark.

Visual Elements & Composition

Near-black ink dominates the image, with pale stone grey and sepia tones carrying the midground and off-white paper showing through in the highest lights. The composition runs horizontally, anchored by a diagonal column of helmeted soldiers moving across the scene with rifles at the ready. A mounted officer rises above them, while a ruined stone building with a dark doorway sits to one side and broken timber debris fills the foreground. The name Kerr Eby appears in the print itself.

Meaning & Symbolism

Eby is best known for his harrowing depictions of World War I, and his etchings are built on the expressive power of light and dark. Here the shadows do the work: they hide faces, press the soldiers into a single moving mass and leave the ruined building as evidence of what the march passes through. The contrast between the column's forward motion and the wrecked stone behind it carries the theme of war as both movement and loss. Born in Tokyo to missionary parents, Eby became one of America's most distinguished printmakers of the early twentieth century.

Wear the Night Scene

A tee gives this etching a large, flat field to work with, so the dense blacks and the diagonal column read clearly from across the room as well as up close. The print is worn on the body, which suits a piece built on figures moving through shadow. Wearing Shadows puts a 1910s wartime scene in everyday view, drawn from the work of an artist who made war's aftermath his subject.