Robert Emerson Curtis was born in Croydon, England, in 1898 and migrated to Australia in 1914. He trained as a commercial artist specialising in newspaper and magazine illustrations.

In 1922, accompanied by a friend, the cinematographer Charles Chauvel, he travelled to the USA. It was while living in San Francisco that he produced his first prints —small etchings of Alcatraz and boats in the harbour.

Upon moving to Chicago in 1925 Emerson Curtis was impressed with the quality of the architecture and the vitality of the buildings being erected in that city. His style of illustration for papers and magazines was influenced by Joseph Pennell, an American lithographer, etcher and illustrator, who embraced the ‘Wonders of Man’ be t...