The artist (shown left), Reynold Weidenaar was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1915. He studied at the Kendall School of Design and at the Kansas City Art Institute from 1938 to 1940. In 1944, Weidenaar received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 1940, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Scholarship. In receiving these grants, Weidenaar was able to travel and record his impressions of other countries, particularly Mexico. In 1949 he was elected to the National Academy and he was later raised to full academician status. Working mostly on copper with all the intaglio processes, Weidenaar produced 212 prints. Weidenaar was one of the first artists in the United States to revive the technique of mezzotint printmaking. He also designed and hand-made the tools he used to create his prints. In 1981 in a New York show reviewed by Theodore Wolff of the Christian Science Monitor, compared his work to John Taylor Arms, Martin Lewis and Grant Wood. He called Weidenaar, .a virtuoso with the etching needle; a master craftsman with extraordinary skills." He also notedt;...a rare ability to reach deep into the unique identity of an object or an individual and to bring it forcefully to the surface in a few lines.