An Old Homestead: E. T. Hurley Works Gifted to the Taft

In 2025, the Taft Museum of Art accepted two copper etching plates and four etchings depicting the Taft home by Edward Timothy (E. T.) Hurley from friends of the museum David and Debra Hausrath.

E. T. Hurley was born in 1869 to Irish immigrants living in Cincinnati. At about 7 years old in private school, Hurley would sharpen old nails and cut designs into his writing slate. He later recollected that this was the first time he experimented with drypoint etching, though he wouldn’t return to etching until his adult life.¹ After studying at St. Xavier College (now Xavier University) Hurley became a salesman at a stationery store. Here, Art Academy students visited the store to look at magazine illustrations, and Hurley would ask them about their classes. He toured the school and enrolled.² Hurley spent his first year at the Art Academy taking night classes, and his instructor, recognizing his talent, recommended him to The Rookwood Pottery Company (American, founded 1880). Hurley's first catalogued work as a ceramic decorator was in 1896.³

Another Art Academy instructor, Frank Duveneck, insisted that Hurley transfer his pen drawings to copper and study etching. Hurley became a pupil of Duveneck, and the two shared some 25 years of tutelage and collegiality until Duveneck’s death in 1919. Hurley’s early etchings received international recognition: the British Museum accepted about twenty prints into the permanent collection by 1913.⁴ Critics celebrated Hurley’s ability to capture the simple beauty of memorable Cincinnati landmarks through detailed etchings. 

The etching process can be difficult, with little room for error. Artists began by coating a copper plate with an acid resisting material, typically wax, which becomes the etching ground. Hurley devised a special formula for his etching ground that he never shared with anyone else. Then, the sketch is scratched into the etching ground with a needle, exposing the copper plate; the artist is essentially working in reverse as he sketches a design that will be opposite when printed. Next, the whole plate is dipped into acid, which “bites” into the exposed areas of the copper plate, leaving areas covered with etching ground unaffected. Then, the remaining etching ground is stripped away and the plate is cleaned. Finally, the artist wipes ink across the surface of the plate, which holds in the etched lines, wipes off the excess ink, and presses the plate onto paper with immense pressure to transfer the ink to the paper, creating a mirror image of the original drawing. This process, known as intaglio etching, can produce hundreds of impressions before a copper plate deteriorates.⁵ On average, Hurley spent two to three weeks on each etching.

Hurley made multiple etchings of Charles and Anna Taft’s house prior to its establishment as a museum.  The Tafts were well-known in Cincinnati for collecting and supporting the arts as well as for their philanthropy. Hurley published a print of the Taft house in his 1916 book Cincinnati: Prints from the Etchings of E. T. Hurley, alongside the following poem by Amelia Hickenlooper Dunham:

AN OLD HOMESTEAD, PIKE STREET.

For half a hundred years
This house has held its own
Against the push of Time;
Now amid factories
And fast encroaching slums,
It dominant still abides.
And it is still a home;
Its genial hearth, which sent
Forth foremost citizens,
Still is hospitable.
Doubly hospitable now,
For the mansion’s doors swing wide,
Not alone to family friends,
But to all friends of Art.

 Poetry celebrating rural life was common in the late 19th and early 20th century to promote quietude and reflect on America’s persistent industrialization. When this poem was published in 1916, the Taft house was “dwarfed on each side by immense factories”—to the North, the A. H. Pugh Building, and to the South, the American Book company.⁶

However, Hurley omitted both factories in his print of the Taft house. Dunham, a Cincinnati club woman, wrote accompanying poems to Hurley’s etchings in his 1916 book. Club women promoted women’s roles outside of the home, including literary clubs, art clubs, exercising political and social activism. In her work with Hurley, Dunham elicits the reminiscence of Hurley’s work and his ability to conjure romantic scenes of familiar urban Cincinnati.

Hurley’s career as a ceramic decorator at Rookwood Pottery lasted over 50 years. He went on to publish nine books of etchings of Cincinnati, teach drawing and etching at Xavier University, exhibit works internationally, and paint pottery for President Wilson. David and Debra Hausrath honor his legacy and contribution to Cincinnati history with their generous gifts to the Taft collection.