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GIOVANNI ANTONIO CANALE
called
CANALETTO
Venice 1697 – 1768 Venice

Canaletto dominated topographical painting in Venice in the first half of the 18th century and his vedute (views) were much collected by visiting British grand tourists. He had taken up etching in the later 1730’s (and had abandoned the technique by 1746). Canaletto’s thirty-four plates, whether topographical or capriccio views, sparkle with Venetian light and are imbued with the essence of the Rococo.

Il Portico con la Lanterna
The Portico with a Lantern
Bromberg 10 iii/iii
301 x 433 mm
Original etching, c1740.
The plate signed in the lower border.
Third (final) state, with the Remondini inventory number FF4 added at the bottom left.
Issued post 1756 or later.
On laid paper with margins, watermarked with the Remondini ‘R’.
Central vertical drying crease.
Slight foxing, most notably in the margins.

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Ex collection:
G Usslaub (Lugt 1221)
Paul Prouté personal collection (Lugt 2103c)
Docteur Dominique Franquet

The Portico with the Lantern is one of Canaletto’s most fantastic (in both senses) compositions. He transformed Venice’s flat site into a multilevel one replete with crumbling temples and monuments that are more typical of ancient Rome than the characteristic Gothic vernacular of Venice. It speaks of the romantic fascination of the times for classical remains (Herculaneum had only recently been uncovered) and a notion current at the time that invention and fantasy were the heart of artistic genius.

(Adapted from the text of Terry Marvel for Milwaukee Art Museum’s catalogue Building a Masterpiece)

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HAYDN DRAKE REYNOLDS MACKEY
King’s Lynn December 1881 - March 1979 Birmingham

Mackey trained at the Slade before the First World War, in which he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps on the Western Front, as an Official War Artist.

After the war he worked principally as a book illustrator and printmaker, but he also exhibited paintings in France and from the 1930’s taught at Walthamstow School of Art.

Mackey’s print work consisted of coloured linocuts and woodcuts. For his colour prints he devised his own technique, whereby the block was printed on thin see-through paper similar to tracing paper, in black ink, though sometimes, as in these examples, with a second colour, here grey-blue. The rest of the colours were achieved by hand-painting in oil colour on the reverse and when dry, sticking the impression, paint side down, onto an oatmeal support sheet. The double sheet was trimmed to appear as one.

Mackey’s prints are rare, as they were never formally editioned, no doubt due to the complexity of their production.

Up with the Lark
and
Homewards plods his weary way
216 x 377 mm
Two companion linocuts, c1925.
Each signed in pencil.
Printed in black and grey-blue, and hand-coloured on the reverse and applied to an oatmeal backing, as described above.

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HENRY VAN DE VELDE
Antwerp 1863 – 1957 Zurich

One of the originators of the Art Nouveau style, Van de Velde initially studied painting at the Antwerp Academy and in Paris, returning to Antwerp in 1886. He joined the Brussels avant-garde group Les Vingt and increasingly influenced by the English Arts & Crafts movement, he abandoned painting for the decorative arts, interior decoration and architecture.

He was one of the instigators of the ‘Art Nouveau’ style, a term first coined in Belgium to describe the works of Les Vingt.

His poster for the German food manufacturer Tropon is an icon of art nouveau style.

Tropon
310 x 202 mm
Original four colour lithograph, 1898, signed in the stone with the monogram.
Issued in Pan, 1898.
With their text lines at the foot of the sheet.
On stout buff wove. Occasional printing creases.

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A reduced version for Pan, of the poster advertising the Tropon food supplement, a protein processed from eggs.

Van de Velde was appointed director of Tropon’s advertising and graphic design in 1898.

His curvilinear abstract design fuses the concept of the whites of the eggs being separated from the yolks, with the manufacturer’s logo of three sparrows.

The lettering in the lithographic version Tropon ist Eiweiss Nahrung translates as Tropon is Protein, a variant from of the poster lettering which reads Die concentrjerteste Nahrung in the German posters and L’Aliment le plus concentré in the French versions.

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