[From the catalogue-in-progress for “Landscapes & Livestock”, a loan exhibition for Agincourt Homecoming in the Fall of 2015]

HAGERMAN, Kent [1893-1978]

“Trackside Chicago”

circa 1935

etching / 7.5 by 10.0 inches

Born William Kay Hagerman in 1893 in Ohio, he studied at the Cleveland School of Art and the Sorbonne in Paris while serving in France during World War I.  He began his career doing newspaper and magazine illustrations and operated an engraving company with his brother. Hagerman moved to Loveland, Colorado in 1933 and died there in 1978 at the age of 85. Hagerman rarely dated his works, but the Chicago Board of Trade building in the background was built in 1930, about the time of his move to Colorado, though a visitor to the collection has noted the 50s vintage locomotive in the foreground.

Convenient rail connections put Agincourt within Chicago’s sphere of influence. Business and culture both looked eastward for precedent and approval. Aidan and Cordelia Archer, for example, had come to Iowa in the ‘teens ti=o manage his father’s manufacturing plant and their home on the Avenue was designed by a Chicago architect. So, this gift to the Community Collection from the Archers’ children reflects our community’s broader connections there.