Printmaker and painter Ernest Haskell born June 30, 1876, in West Woodstock, Connecticut, was a painter, printmaker and illustrator. He graduated from the Woodstock Academy in 1895 and began his career as a newspaper illustrator and graphic designer the following year.

Haskell traveled to Paris in 1897 to study at Académie Julian for a year, and on his return held a solo exhibition of his works at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He returned to Europe once again in 1900, this time to study the works of Rembrandt, Leonardo, and Durer, whose works would influence him for the duration of his career. A seminal trip, he also met Whistler while in Paris, and his interest in etching was piqued, forever altering the course of his artistic career. In 1911 he held his first major exhibition of prints in New York, and another at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1916.

In 1914, he visited California and Florida, creating a series of prints of the landscapes he took inspiration from in these new climates. In 1915 he exhibited at the Panama Pacific Internation Exhibition, winning a bronze medal for etchings. Haskell returned to California in 1918 for two years and during his final visit in 1925 he painted a series of fifty California watercolors.

Haskell live and worked during winter in New York and during summer in Maine. He was a prodigious printmaker who issued over 400 prints in the first quarter of the 20^th century. He died in an automobile accident in Bath, Maine, on November 2, 1925, while returning from his summer home to prepare for an exhibition of his paintings. A major memorial exhibition of his works was held at the MacBeth Gallery in New York in 1926, attended by his friends and contemporaries Childe Hassam, John Marin, Royal Cortissoz, and others. 

Information partially obtained from the Connecticut Biographical Dictionary compiled by Caryn Hannan