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A Selection of Prints by Modern British Artists

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SAMUEL PALMER
London 1805 – 1881 Reigate

Palmer wrote of his “great gorge of old poetry to get up the dreaming” when he worked at etching. Most of his plates are inspired by poems. The two late great plates The Bellman and The Lonely Tower relate to the same passage from Milton’s Il Penseroso –

“ – the Belman’s drowsie charm,
To bless the dores from nightly harm:
Or let my Lamp at midnight hour,
Be seen in some high lonely Towr ”

The Bellman
Lister 11 v/vii  
190 x 251 mm (plate); 167 x 236 mm (image);
215 x 282 mm (sheet)

Original etching, completed 1879. Signed in pencil. Fifth state with the etched remarque in the plate border. One of 60 such proofs issued 1879 by The Fine Art Society, prior to the lettered edition. A fine impression on laid paper. Overall in very good condition. A short repaired tear at the right sheet edge and a few tiny foxmarks in the lower margin.

£15000

The village is a recollection of Shoreham “a dream of that genuine village, where I mused away some of my best years” though its surrounding landscape is made up.

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JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER
Lowell, Massachusetts 1834 – 1903 London

Nude Model reclining
(Ref: Spink 73 ii/iii, before the spot erased on the shoulder)
Transfer lithograph with stump work, 1893.

One of 22-40 life-time impressions printed for Whistler by Way.
On antique laid paper.

£7500

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GERALD LESLIE BROCKHURST R.A., R.E.
Edgbaston 1890 – 1978 New Jersey

Among the awards which Brockhurst won as a student at the Royal Academy Schools was a Travelling Scholarship, which took him to Italy in 1913. Piero della Francesca, Leonardo and his Lombard followers, the mannerist Bronzino, were long lasting influences on his highly finished realism, delight in chiaroscuro and capturing of the contrasting textures of fabrics, as well as the occasional landscape background.

It was exclusively in some of his finest etched portraits, produced 1928-1932, that Brockhurst adopted the Italian Renaissance format of the sitter posed either literally against an open window, as in Viba, with a view to a distant hilly landscape (generally reminiscent of Umbria), or the window frame is suggested by the inked bevelled edge of the plate itself.

Viba
Wright 63 i/viii           227 x 175 mm

Original etching, 1929. Signed in pencil. A trial proof in the 1st state, before the plate was reduced to 213 x 170 mm removing the window frame at the top and at the left side. Before the plate was dated, though with the signature. Before additional hatching and increased shadow at the left. Before the bevelling of the plate. On wove paper.

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TERRY FROST R.A.
Leamington Spa 1915 - 2003

Frost described his work as presenting the sensations of movement through space, time, light, weather, and the emotional reaction to a particular moment and place, rather than representing their physical appearance. He created an abstract visual poetry through an exuberance of intense luminous colour.

Much of his work was created in St. Ives and Newlyn and is generated by his perception of the movement of boats and light on water.

“I was not portraying the boats, the sand, the horizon, or any other subject matter, but concentrating on the emotion engendered by what I saw. The subject is in fact the sensation evoked by movements and the colours of the harbour”.

Tolcarne Rhythm
392 x 275 mm

Original colour aquatint, 1998. Signed in pencil, dated, entitled and numbered 112/175. Published 1998 for the Big Issue Art Collection to raise funds for The Big Issue Foundation to help the homeless. On wove with margins. The colours vibrant.

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STANLEY REGINALD WILSON
Camberwell 1890 – 1973 London

Gull at Sunset, in the Scottish Islands
304 x 402 mm

Original colour drypoint and aquatint. With the drypoint signature in the plate. Signed in pencil. And with the blind monogram stamp. Printed by Wilson. Though an edition of 100 was proposed, (this impression is numbered 4/100 ) it is very unlikely that many impressions were printed, considering the complexity of the number of coloured inks involved. Printed à la poupée from two plates, in powder blue, pink, green, crimson, orange, yellow, brown, ochre, purple, Prussian blue, grey and black, on thin japan. The colours vivid.

£1250

Wilson’s colour etchings are generally extremely rare and all his plates were destroyed by bomb damage in the War. I have never seen this subject before.

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JEFF CLARKE R.E.
Born Brighton 1935

As a student at Brighton School of Art, 1952-56 Jeff Clarke was taught etching by Raymond Cowern, who belonged to that generation trained in the 1930’s in the traditions of the Etching Revival, before the cultural divide effected by the Second World War. Under Cowern’s tutelage Jeff received a British Institute scholarship and won the Prix de Rome for engraving, 1956-8. In Rome Jeff’s interests took a different turn and painting became his preoccupation. He would only return to etching decades later. Only two impressions from his student days survive, both unique trial proofs. The copper plates both long gone, as the ethos in which they were etched. Both are delightful evocations of an earlier era of etching, though his present interest in chiaroscuro and telling silhouette is already in evidence.

Rue Pequet, Dieppe
163 x 74 mm

Original etching, 1954. Signed in pencil and annotated Dieppe 1954 Trial proof. On laid paper. Verso very pale glue stains from previous mounting in the top and bottom margins.

£500

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THEODORE ROUSSEL
Lorient, Brittany 1847 – 1926 St Leonards on Sea

Quite exceptionally, to display the etchings at his first one-man show in 1889, Roussel designed ‘etched’ frames in two different patterns. In 1907-08 he designed two further patterns, this time for frames with rounded corners, which were first used to exhibit his monochrome etchings in 1908. The Phaeton frame, named from the motif in the upper medallion, was one of the latter.

Roussel etched four patterned strips, each with an etched signature, onto a copper plate. The resulting impressions, printed in black ink onto ‘white’ paper, were cut to form paper segments which were glued onto narrow convex wooden mouldings to make the finished frame, which was varnished to preserve the paper veneer.

Only about 10 frames in each design were completed and it is unknown how many (or perhaps how few!) have survived but they are certainly very rarely encountered.

The Street, Chelsea Embankment,
in an original etched Phaeton Pattern frame
Hausberg 26 (etching), 166 (frame pattern) 281 x 405 mm (frame size, including the medallion extrusions)

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The Etching
Original etching, 1888-89. The plate signed. Printed by Roussel and trimmed by him on the platemark and signed in pencil on the ‘tab’ (a practice in imitation of Whistler). One of about 40 impressions in total. Printed with plate-tone on laid paper, the plate-tone disturbed in the lower left corner. One foxmark at the lower edge.

A row of shops, formerly 83-88 Cheyne Walk, which were demolished in 1889 in connection with the rebuilding of Battersea Bridge. The signboards for Clarke’s coffee rooms and Weller’s, dealer in furniture, (as well as a currently topical advert for the News of the World) are legible. The other shops were Cole’s, photographer and coffee shop; Groves, and Nicholas, both tobacconists.

The Frame
Original etched strips applied to a round-cornered moulding and varnished, as described above. Signed on each reverse side.

Provenance: Agnes Ethel Mackay, the niece of Roussel’s second wife, who after her aunt’s death in 1917 acted as housekeeper and studio assistant to Roussel.

Miss Mackay lent this frame to the Roussel Memorial Exhibition at Goupil in 1927, the year after the artist’s death. The associated labels, which indicate “Not for Sale”, still intact on the back of the frame, with her address 15 Upper Cheyne Road, Chelsea.

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