A
Small Selection of Modern
Continental Prints currently in stock
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Continental Prints 01, will allow
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of these prints have since been sold and
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CHARLES MERYON
Paris 1821 – 1868 Sainte-Maurice (Seine)
Meryon
etched the first of his series of twenty-two
L’Eaux-fortes sur Paris (Etchings of
Paris) in 1850, but perhaps only conceived
of a whole series in 1852, when he etched
a title piece.
The
majority of the plates were carried out as
Haussmann, elected prefect for the Seine
in 1853, was instigating the wide boulevards
that changed the face of Paris.
Philippe
Burty, author of the first catalogue of Meryon’s etchings, admired
(in an interview in the Gazette des Beaux
Art, 1863) how Meryon had expressed “with
a clarity that is peculiarly French, the
intimate and supreme poetry of old Paris,
which has only survived for our generation
to demolish and disfigure without compassion”.
L’Abside
de Notre Dame - Apse of Notre Dame
Burty 52; Delteil-Wright 38 iv/viii;
Schneiderman 45 iv/ix
163 x 298 mm
Original
etching, 1854. Fourth state, the first edition.
The plate signed, dated and inscribed in
cursive script. Printed and issued by Meryon
himself. On cream laid paper with large margins.
Sold
Provenance:
C. W. Dowdeswell (Lugt 690)
Henri Petiet
(Ex Lugt)
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MARIUS ALEXANDER JACQUES BAUER
The Hague 1867 – 1932 Amsterdam
Painter
and etcher, Marius Bauer was a member of
the Pulchri Studio (“For the study
of the beauty”) in The Hague.
In
1888 his patron and future dealer, E.J. van
Wisselingh, had paid for Bauer to undertake
a trip to Constantinople. The many drawings
he produced there, and on his future extensive
travels in the Near and Far East, served
as the source for his Orientalist paintings
and etchings on which his reputation in The
Netherlands was established.
Procession with Elephants
Van
Wisselingh 113
181 x 130 mm
Original
etching, 1899.
Signed in pencil and numbered
38, from the edition of 100. Printed in dark
brown ink, with plate tone, on laid paper.
Sold
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EMIL NOLDE
North Schleswig 1867 – 1956
Seebüll
During
the three years following his recovery from
a serious illness in the summer of 1909,
Emil Nolde became pre-occupied with painting
biblical subjects, and in 1910-11 he made
a parallel series of etchings.
Nolde
and his wife had visited the Netherlands
in April 1910 where they admired a painting
of Saul & David
(then fully attributed to Rembrandt) in the
Mauritshaus.
“We were especially taken with … Saul & David where the tears of melancholy of the unhappy
king…burden his cheeks, and , which is so spiritually
and inconceivably wonderfully painted, as only
Rembrandt could do it.”
Saul and David
Schiefler
152 ii/ii;
Ackley 60 (Boston exhibition catalogue)
302 x 251 mm
Original
etching with tonal effects*, 1911.
Signed
in pencil. Annotated II (second state – no
known first state is extant) and numbered 12, of the unrecorded edition size.
Printed
on Van Gelder Zonen watermarked laid paper.
Sold
Not
a theme much tackled by printmakers. The
previous most celebrated image of David playing
the harp to Saul is Lucas van Leyden’s
engraving of 1508. The relatively little-known
Christoffel Bockstorffer etched the subject
in 1531.
Ackley
comments of Nolde’s rendition “one
of the richest and most complex in psychological
overtones of Nolde’s narrative or anecdotal
prints”.
* “My innovation in the
area of etching probably consists in my having,
to the best of my ability, exploited every
possibility that the corrosive action of acid
offers” (Nolde interviewed in 1949).
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NELE VAN DE VELDE
1897 - 1965
Nele
was the eldest of the five children of the
Belgian painter and architect Henry van de
Velde (1863-1957) and very close to him.
Together they discovered the art of the Die
Brücke German Expressionist artist Ernst
Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) in 1916. They
met him the following year when Kirchner,
invalided out of the army, went to Switzerland
to recuperate, and Henry van de Velde’s
work took him to Switzerland and he and his
family moved to Davos. There was an instant
rapport, which led to Nele learning woodcut
with Kirchner.
A
regular correspondence developed (later published)
and Nele sent Kirchner examples of her woodcuts,
with amusing inscriptions, including scenes
of the Staffelalp, where Kirchner had a little
summer cottage, outside of Davos, in the
mountains (for which he had hand-carved all
the furniture and necessities). In 1920
Nele and her mother spent some time with
him there.
A
friend of Kirchner’s,
to whom he had shown Nele’s woodcuts
of the Staffelalp visit, suggested they would
make a good book; an idea Kirchner supported.
He recommended that the captions, kept brief,
were printed together with the woodblocks.
And it was published accordingly. The final
caption signs off like the end of an illustrated
letter telling the story of the day’s
visit. The woodcuts include descriptions
of the difficulties of the outward journey
through the snowy landscape, arriving at
the cottage, the warm welcome received from
Kirchner and the cold return trip back home
to Davos again.
Ein Tag bei Kirchner auf der Staffelalp
A day’s visit to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in the Staffelalp
350
x 260 mm (sheet);
140 x 125 mm and smaller (images)
Ten
woodcuts, 1920. Each image captioned below.
Printed on both sides of once stitched,
folded, cream laid paper, a single image
to each leaf. Lacking the first woodcut
of setting out and the title page.
Sold
Accompanied
by a sheet of green-grey paper, probably
once part of a paper cover around sketches
of Berlin life by Kirchner. One
side stamped with Kirchner’s initials printed from a small lino block; the other inscribed and signed in ink by Kirchner with a list of 21 Skizzen
von E L Kirchner.
List
of the Nele van de Velde woodcuts, in published
order
- Nele
zu klein, Wegweiser zu hoch, musste klettern
und lesen, Weg zur Staffelalp. (Nele
too small. Road sign too high, had to climb
pole to read ‘To the Staffelalp’)
- Durch
hohen Schnee und verschneite Tannen. (Through
mountainous snow and snow-laden fir trees)
- …………die
Alp! (……The
Alp)
- Vor
Kirchners Hütte (In
front of Kirchner’s cottage)
- Unerwartet
und stürmisch. (Unexpected
and ardent )
- Benommen
und stumm. (Dazed and
silent)
- und
nach reichlichen Genüssen aller Art, Kirchner
winkt ab!! (And after
abundant treats of all kinds, Kirchner waves
goodbye!)
- Beraught!
Nele findet den Weg nur auf den Händen über
Schneedämme
hinweg. (Euphoric! Nele
finds the way back only by climbing over
snowbanks!)
- Durch
die Waldfurien verfolgt. (Pursued
by the furies of the wood)
- sinkt
Nele erschöpft kurz vor
dem Ziel. Die Nacht war hart und kühl, nüchtern
kam sie nach Haus! Mit vielen Grüssen
Ihre Nele van de Velde. (Short
of her destination, Nele sinks down exhausted.
The night was harsh and cold, sobering her
return home.)
With
best regards,
Yours, Nele van de Velde.
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JACQUES VILLON
Damville 1875 – 1963 Puteaux
after
EDOUARD MANET
Paris 1832 – 1883 Paris
Villon,
as an original printmaker, used colour aquatint
for his early plates, in the ethos of the
Belle Epoque, begun in 1899, though he abandoned
the technique for monochrome drypoint when
he took up the Cubist aesthetic. But in 1921
the Paris art-dealer Bernheim-Jeune commissioned
the first of what became a series of colour
aquatints reproducing modern masterpieces,
which Villon produced, parallel with his
own original work, throughout the 1920’s.
Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’Herbe
Ginestet-Pouillon
668
499 x 630 mm
Colour
aquatint, 1929, after Manet’s painting.
Signed
in pencil by Villon, and numbered.
Edition
of 200. On Arches watermarked wove paper.
Sold
Manet’s painting was exhibited at the Salon des Refusés in 1863 and caused a scandal.
The public were outraged at a nude being introduced into a scene of a contemporary outdoor picnic lunch. Nudes abounded at the official Salon, but as classical goddesses or allegorical personifications, not in ‘real life’ situations.
Ironically,
Manet’s composition was inspired by Italian old master precedents. He spent much time in the Louvre studying the old masters, including obviously Giorgione’s Concert
Champêtre.
Furthermore Manet posed his three principal figures, modelled by Victorine Meurent, Manet’s brother Eugène and Ferdinand Leenhoff, his future brother-in-law, in imitation of the three river gods in Marcantonio Raimondi’s engraving of Raphael’s
Judgement of Paris.
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PABLO PICASSO
Malaga 1881 – 1973 Mougins
Interest
in the Cordoban poet Luis de Góngora
y Argote (1561-1627) had been revived in
the late 1920’s at the 300th anniversary
of his death. His deliberately illogical
choice of metaphors especially chimed with
the Surrealists. A French translation of
a selection of twenty of his love sonnets
and other poems was published in 1928.
Góngora
was a friend of El Greco, and his portrait
was painted by Velasquez. In 1947 Picasso
made a lithograph of Góngora’s
head after this painting, and an aquatint
version the following year for inclusion
in the Vingt Poèmes de Góngora.
For
the portfolio, Picasso etched, in cursive
script, copies of nineteen of the poems,
in the French translation, each accompanied
by an etched or aquatinted image of a single
head, all a variety of female faces, except
for the portrait of the poet himself.
To the City of Cordova
Bloch
509;
Goeppert & Cramer 51
Sonnet 17 of Vingt Poèmes de Góngora
Original
lift-ground aquatint, 1947.
One of the 25
hors commerce impressions, numbered in pencil
in Roman numerals II/XXV.
(The edition was
of 250, numbered 1-250.)
All the impressions
were issued unsigned, as loose sheets in
a portfolio.
On wove paper. Mount stained
in the margins.
£2250
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