Rainy Night, 1939. 250x175 mm; 9 7/8x7 inches, wide margins. Edition of 25. Signed in pencil, lower right * Restless Night, 1940. 154x190 mm; 6x7 1/2 inches, wide margins. Signed in pencil, lower right. Very good impressions. Biran p. 43; Biran p. 137.
Borne (1902), a successful printmaker as well as sculptor, had invented color drypoint in 1943, a technique distinct from that of color etching. John Taylor Arms, in a review of Borne's 1941 exhibition of drypoints at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C., wrote that the artist was "in such harmony with his medium that he is able, through it, to interpret his conceptions in terms of the printed line with clarity, without hesitation, and with a feeling of discerning and sensitive as it is forthright."
Borne was born in Poland though immigrated with his family to the United States when he was 14 years old during World War I. He studied at the Art Students League and the National Academy in New York. While his subjects varied, his most striking scene is Rainy Night, which won the Frederick Talcott Prize from the Society of American Etchers in 1939. In 1950, Borne and his wife moved from Brooklyn to Nyack, New York, where he founded the Tappan Zee Art Center.
