Image Conscious. Catalogue 73 from Elizabeth Harvey-Lee

Elizabeth Harvey-Lee, Print Dealer. Etchings and Prints for Sale

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IMAGE CONSCIOUS

Printmaking, perhaps more than any other of the visual arts, is the art of creating images. Being issued in multiple impressions they must be meaningful subjects to hold the attention and be able to attract multiple buyers. And to do this they may be beautiful, memorable, funny, nostalgic, dramatic, significant, informative, strange, iconic…

This catalogue offers a selection of images which I find of interest, appealing or intriguing.

The desirability of an image can be reflected in other artists copying it, either soon after it has been made, or in later decades or centuries; made in homage, to learn from or to show ability, or fraudulently to deceive.

Dürer is probably the most copied printmaker. Though documentarily unconfirmed, Vasari describes him complaining on his second visit to Venice, 1505/6, of Raimondi’s line engraved copies of his Life of the Virgin woodcut series. In his later copies, such as of Dürer’s Small woodcut Passion, Raimondi omitted the Dürer AD monogram, leaving the tablet blank.

In a recorded dispute in Nuremburg, Dürer complained of a visiting artist selling copies of his prints with his monogram. Dürer had a protective publishing ‘privilege’ (an early form of copyright) from the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian. The catalogue begins with an authentic impression of Dürer’s Madonna on a Grassy Bank, and it was his Madonnas in particular that were copied..

JOHN TAYLOR ARMS R.E., Washington DC 1887 – 1953 New York. Venetian Mirror - The Grand Canal, Venice. Original etching, 1935.

ALBRECHT DÜRER
Nuremberg 1471-1528
The Virgin & Child on a Grassy Bank
Holl.31, Bartsch/Illus Bartsch 34. 115 x 71 mm
Original engraving, 1503. Later impression.

Because of the date displayed prominently on a plaque above the Virgin (only the second time Dürer had dated a plate – and he would date all subsequent ones) it is thought that this was engraved as a New Year greeting (before reformation of the calendar, the new year was calculated as beginning on 25th December). A rare plate, the British Museum have only a copy by Urs Graf.

There are fourteen different copies of the Madonna on a Grassy Bank recorded.

It is followed in the catalogue, by a copy of Dürer’s Landscape with a large Cannon by Hieronymous Hopfer (probably etched within Dürer’s lifetime). Hopfer has replaced Dürer’s monogram with his own monogram and armorial ‘logo’.

JOHN TAYLOR ARMS R.E., Washington DC 1887 – 1953 New York. Venetian Mirror - The Grand Canal, Venice. Original etching, 1935.

HIERONYMOUS HOPFER
Augsburg c.1500 – 1563 Nuremburg
Dürer’s Landscape with Cannon
Bartsch (Hopfer) 45; Illustrated Bartsch (Dürer) 99 C1 193 x 280 mm
Etching, copy after Dürer.
Hopfer’s own monogram and device (the family coat of arms, granted to Hopfer’s father Daniel, by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1524) in place of Dürer’s.
A fine, but later impression (17th century), with the publisher Funck’s number, 62.
£1500

Hieronymous was one of two sons trained as etchers by their father, Daniel Hopfer. Daniel Hopfer (c.1470-1536) worked as an armourer in Augsburg, but in about 1500 was the first artist to adapt the armourers’ method of etching ornament into iron armour, to the making of intaglio printed images. It was not till fifteen years later that Dürer began to experiment, briefly, with the technique of etching: he etched six plates, between 1515 and 1518. The large Cannon is the only Dürer print to reflect a contemporary significant historical and political situation, when Turkish expansion still threatened Europe. (The Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I and the Pope had, unsuccessfully, called for another Crusade against the Turks in 1518, the year of Dürer’s etching.) It is also the only one to feature an extensive landscape, which is based in reverse on his earlier drawing of Eschenau, a village outside of Nuremberg.

Further into the catalogue I offer a copy of Della Bella’s Elephant; and further again a Thomas Bewick Workshop version of Bewick’s original Elephant.

The catalogue also includes prints by artists previously unknown to me, such as Emmanuel Phelippes-Beaulieux, Birger Sandzén, Peter August Böckstiegel, Thérèse Robert among others.