Bauby's Corner, Waterbury, CT by Edward J. Balthazar, Amer., (1890-1956)

Etching, 1943, Ed. probably 100, 7-15/16 x 9-15/16, signed and dated 1/43 in the plate, on cream wove paper, pale traces of tape residue at margin edges verso, barely visible recto, palest trace of mat line. Edward J. Balthazar was a well respected Waterbury based lawyer, who had a life-long passion and talent for art. In his youth Balthazar studied in New York at the Art Student's League with George Bellows. Bellows thought so highly of his work that he helped arrange Balthazar's first solo exhibition. Here, as in several of his urban images of the bustling industrial Connecticut town, Balthazar has given us an iconic, Edward Hopper-like view of the legendary Waterbury landmark located on the southeast corner of the Green, sadly razed for a new office building in 1982. I used to shop at the market there as a toddler with my mother, and remember spilling a hot fudge sundae all over myself as a kid at Nat's Luncheonette! An impression of this print is in the collection of Waterbury's Mattatuck Museum.