Rye 1884

Charles Adams Platt made this etching titled 'Rye'. It depicts a street in Rye, a small town in East Sussex, England. Platt was an American artist, so what was he doing depicting an English town? He was part of a late 19th century artistic trend for American artists to study in Europe. You can see how the town is rendered with an almost romantic gaze, with the jumbled buildings creating a quaint scene. The etching process itself allowed for the relatively easy reproduction of images, meaning this image could have reached a wide audience. Platt would have studied this technique in art school or from other artist mentors. As historians, we could look at records from art schools, galleries and museums of the time to better understand the circulation of this image and what it meant to its audience.