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The Home Page Selection

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When a print has been sold it will be marked as Sold.

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Publisher PHILIPS GALLE
Haarlem 1537 – 1612 Antwerp

The appeal of sets of prints of the different times of the year is confirmed by Galle engraving himself two sets, respectively after Stradanus and van Heemskerck, as well as publishing this set after

MAARTEN DE VOS
Antwerp 1532 – 1603 Antwerp

Leading Antwerp painter and designer of prints.

There were three editions of the set, the first issued by Philips Galle, the second by Theodore Galle, though he did not change the name on the plates, the third by Johannes Galle, who did add his own name as publisher.

The Four Seasons
Hollstein (de Vos) 1424-1427 i/ii       102 x 133 mm
The set of four, c1590? The plates numbered 1-4. Each lettered with the artist’s and publisher’s names and with the season in Latin. A well-matched set, each with margins of 6 mm. Summer with a Gothic P watermark. Generally very good condition.

Sold

Each of the seasons is personified, with objects suggestive of the specific month at her feet, before a distant landscape with appropriate seasonal labours and leisure activities.

Spring wears a floral wreath and holds a bunch of flowers and a lily stem. At her feet a frog, censer, and gardening implements. Beyond, gardeners are at work in a country house garden.
Summer plays the lute, with a bass viol, harp, crumhorn, cittern, shawm, an instrument case for pipes and two open books of music at her feet. Beyond a group of lovers serenade each other while the hay harvest is gathered in.
Autumn holds a cornucopia of fruit and a sheaf of wheat amidst agricultural implements and vegetables. Beyond vines and a tall tree are being harvested.
Winter is dressed in a heavy cloak and warm head covering. She holds a bridle and her feet rest on an anchor by a large fish (fish provided a source of fresh ‘meat’ through the Winter months At this period only limited livestock were overwintered). Beyond a pig is being roasted and figures are skating.

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HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC
Albi 1864 - 1901 Chateau de Malromé, Gironde.

The music publisher Gustave Ondet lived in the same building which housed the Ancourt lithographic printing works. He took up the suggestion to have song titles designed by contemporary artists whose lithographs were printed by Ancourt. Lautrec designed the cover and five of the collection of ten song titles for Ondet's Les Vieilles Histoires, poems by Jean Goudezki set to music by Désiré Dihau.

Désiré Dihau (1835-1909) was a distant cousin of Lautrec. Bassoonist with the Paris Opéra orchestra, Dihau composed melodies for cabaret songs in his free time.

Jean Goudezki (really Edouard Goudez, 1866-1934), a poet and chansonnier, frequented the cabaret Le Chat Noir. He invented the holorine form, sonnets of homophones, which he sang in a deep solemn monotone.

Les Vieilles Histoires - Cover
Delteil 18, Wittrock 5 ii/ii, Adriani 27 iii/iii
350 x 540 mm

Original colour lithograph, 1893. Stamped with the artist's monogram in red ink (Lugt 1338). Final state, as a full colour lithograph, with the publisher's text in a reduced version. Published 1893, edition of 100 (the only edition printed in colours). Printed in olive green, grey, curry-brown, mauve and turquoise on wove paper. Mount stained, minor handling defects.

£6500

Dihau, carrying his bassoon case, leading a bear (a satire on Goudezki) towards the Institut de France.

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FREDERICK JAMES MITCHELL
London 1902 - 1982
Painter, graphic artist and teacher.

The Switchback
(British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, 1924)
69 x 280 mm

Original drypoint, 1924. Signed in pencil, dated and entitled. Printed with platetone in black ink on cream laid paper.

£200

The exhibition to celebrate Empire trade included an amusement park, a stadium for mass entertainments, railway lines, and a bus station, as well as hundreds of temporary buildings; all constructed in the new modern material, concrete.
An accompanying letter from the artist describes the print, which he submitted as his diploma work at the Royal College of Art. He also writes:

I lived in.Wembley and saw the exhibition grow.
It may be of further interest if I tell you that I was actually engaged in painting murals on the ceiling and walls of ex. (ihibition) buildings and restaurants as part of my R.C.A. training period. Mc Alpine was the contractor and paid us by the hour slightly above house painters rates. It was a wonderful period for experiment as little was known of painting on new concrete, both inside and outside work was completed in cold wet conditions between January and Easter of that year. Many young artists were engaged in these projects at the time and enjoyed it.

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STEPHEN GOODEN R.A., R.E.
Tulse Hill 1892 - 1955 Chesham Bois .

The majority of Gooden's copper line engravings were commissioned as book illustrations. Only twenty-four were produced independently, of which Old Whisk must to my mind be one of the most delightful.

Old Whisk
Campbell Dodgson 3 iii/iii
60 x 85 mm

Original engraving, 1940. Signed in pencil, dated and numbered 20 from the edition of 50. On cream wove paper, time-stained at the sheet edges.

£1350

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BRUNO GORLATO
Born Padua 1940. Died Padua April 2021

Gorlato trained both as a painter and architect in Venice and lived and worked in his native city of Padua until his death in April 2021.

His prints, dreamlike 'metaphysical fables' (as one of his exhibitions was called), with imagery frequently drawn from chess, are inspired by the historical architecture, characters, events and literature of the Veneto. A reminder that in Italian cities, perhaps more than anywhere else in Europe, the past is palpably present.

La mia Padova
498 x 349 mm (sheet); the individual plates vary a little in size, but are all about 240 x 180 mm

The complete series of ten etchings, 2007-08. Each signed in pencil, entitled and numbered in Roman numerals from the edition of 50 (XXIII/L).

Printed on stout cream textured wove paper with deckle edges.

£350 each

The series comprises:-
1La Piazza della Frutta (Sold)
2La Torlonga
3Il Salone
4San Nicolò
5Il Duomo
6Il Santo
7Santa Giustina e il Prato
8Il Prato della Valle
9San Clemente
10La Gran Guardia

You may click on one of the smaller thumbnails on the left to view an enlargement (of the first nine etchings).

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