Highlights
from the recent catalogue
Every Picture tells a Story
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Click
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view a selection of prints from other previous
catalogues:
"Graphic
Alchemy" and "The
Romantic Eye"
Some
of these prints – and others from
the catalogue – may since have been sold.
These
are marked as Sold.
Every Picture Tells a Story
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See
also :
For
further information about Every
Picture tells a Sory, please
view the dedicated page within the Catalogues section.
Printed copies of the Catalogue, published
in summer 2013, are still available, priced £12
(UK) and £16 (International orders).
This
is the first of three pages devoted to
a selection of images from this catalogue. Click
here to view the next (second) selection
from this catalogue
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HANS BURGKMAIR the Elder
Augsburg 1473 – 1531 Augsburg
An
important painter and the foremost designer
of woodcuts in Augsburg in his day, Burgkmair
trained with Schongauer and visited Italy
in 1507. From c1508 to 1519 he worked as
designer on various of Maximilian’s great woodcut projects.
The
Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1459 - 1519)
recognized the potential of woodcut for self-promotion,
propaganda and historically preserving his
memory.
In pursuit of this end he commissioned
several major projects: including the Triumphal
Arch (195 blocks printed on 36 leaves), the
Triumphal Procession (135 blocks) and Der
Weisskunig (251 blocks of which 236 have
survived), designed and carried out in the
workshops of Dürer, Burgkmair and Altdorfer, c1510-1518.
The
young Weisskunig learning English from archers
in the Netherlands
Hollstein 460
220 x 193 mm
Woodcut , 1514-16, for Der Weisskunig.
The
block signed with initials. From the edition
published in 1775, and with the related page
number, 228, in the lower margin; 9 mm margins
all round.
On laid paper watermarked with
a double-headed eagle. A little drily printed
at the top.
Sold
Ex
collection William Sharpe (Lugt 2650) and
another unidentified collector, initial G
(ex Lugt)(just showing through recto).
Der
Weisskunig is the autobiography of Maximilian
I, told in the manner of a novel, with the
life of his parents, his own personal life
and the political history of his reign, written
at his dictation, illustrated by Burgkmair
with the assistance of Schaufelein, Beck
and Springinklee.
All
the woodblocks were separately proofed 1514-16
but the text was not printed at this stage.
In the second half of the 16th century Maximilian
had the woodblock illustrations printed again,
but still without the accompanying text.
The blocks disappeared thereafter until they
resurfaced in 1775, when the first full edition
as an illustrated book with text was published.
All
the characters in the book have cryptic names.
Der Weisskunig, “the White King”, is the name Maximilian gave himself, both on account of the symbolism of purity associated with the colour white and the assonance with the German word Weisheit, “wisdom”.
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Workshop
of JACQUES DE GHEYN II
Antwerp 1565 – 1629 The Hague
Trained
first by his father and then apprenticed
to Goltzius, de Gheyn’s first independent engravings to his own designs were produced in 1589.
By 1592 he had started his own publishing firm in Amsterdam.
After his marriage in 1695 he worked increasingly as a print designer and publisher, and left the actual engraving to his apprentices, especially Zacharius Dolendo.
The
Four Evangelists
Hollstein 20-23 ii/ii
197-201 x 153 mm (sheet)
The set of four engravings to the design of
Jacques de Gheyn , c1595.
Each plate with
de Gheyn’s name, also lettered with the name of the evangelist and the plate number.
Good later impressions (17th century) in the second state of three, St
Matthew with the address of the publisher Claez Janz. Visscher. The head of Luke altered from that of a young man without a cap. The de Gheyn excudit removed from all four plates.
Matthew and Mark with narrow or thread margins, Luke trimmed to the platemark at the foot, John, trimmed to the plate at the top and to or fractionally within at the foot.
Generally very good condition. Slight stains on Mathew and John.
£3000
Each
evangelist is accompanied by his attribute,
originating from early church identification
of the evangelists with the four winged beasts
of the Apocalypse, and explained by the Gospels
themselves.
Matthew
is represented by a man, as his gospel opens
with the tree of Christ’s ancestors; Mark, a lion, as his gospel begins with the “voice crying in the wilderness”, considered to be an allusion to the lion;
Luke, the ox, traditionally a sacrificial animal, as Luke’s gospel opens with the sacrifice made by the priest Zacharius;
John, the eagle, the bird that flies closest to heaven and therefore to God, as John had a direct vision of God.
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ADOLF VON MENZEL
Breslau 1815 – 1905 Berlin
Three
years after Menzel was born his father stopped
teaching and set up a lithographic factory,
which he moved to Berlin in 1830. On his
death two years later the seventeen year
old Menzel took over the family business
for a while.
Though he studied briefly at
the Berlin Academy of Art in 1833, drawing
from plaster casts, Menzel was largely self-taught
and quickly established a reputation as an
illustrator, becoming eventually one of the
most prominent German artists of the 19th
century, raised to the German nobility, and
made a member of Académie des Beaux Arts in Paris, and the Royal Academy in London.
Degas described him as “the greatest living master” and the French critic Duranty commented “Free, large and rapid in his drawing, no draftsman is as definitive as he”.
Italienisch
lernen  Learning Italian!
Bock 1155 v/v
254 x 295 mm
Original etching, 1889.
The plate signed and
dated.
A good, later impression, the lettering
of the publisher Verein für Original Radierung zu Berlin scarcely printing.
Sold
A
scene in an Italian tavern.
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JEAN EMILE LABOUREUR
Nantes 1887 – 1943 Morbihan
La
Folle
Sylvain Laboureur 399 ii/ii
210 x 149 mm
Original colour etching with aquatint and rockerwork,
1929.
Second state, with additional work
on the courtyard facades and roof.
Signed
in pencil and numbered 23/69, though only
32 impressions were printed in 1929. (An
edition of 9 had been printed in the 1st
state and further fifteen impressions in
the 2nd state were printed posthumously in
1989.)
Printed from two plates in black and
sanguine on Rives watermarked wove paper.
£1250
An
unexplained subject, somewhat of an oddity
in Laboureur’s œuvre, though the same year he also engraved the equally unique and strange Le
Travesti, a portrait of his elder son in fancy dress, wearing a crown and a tunic decorated as playing cards.
The
architectural setting of La Folle is taken
from a photo by Eugène Atget of a courtyard in the south-western Paris suburb of Vanves.
Atget
(1857-1927) is noted for his documentary
photos of Paris street scenes and though
his work only gained wide attention some
decades after his death, he was known by
artists in the 1920’s and inspired the Surrealists among others.
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ARCHIBLD STANDISH HARTRICK
Bangalore, Madras 1864 – 1950 London
The
son of an Indian Army captain, Hartrick was
educated in Edinburgh and took a degree there
before taking up painting, attending Legros’ classes at the Slade, 1884-85.
Like many Slade students he went on to Paris, where he studied at Julian’s and in Cormon’s studio, becoming friendly with his fellows Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh and Gauguin.
Back in London, from 1889 Hartrick worked as a black & white artist for the Daily
Graphic.
After
his marriage to the flower painter Lily Blatherwick,
they moved to Tresham in Gloucestshire, but
returned to London permanently in 1907, for
Hartrick to teach at Camberwell. From 1914
he taught lithography at the Central School
of Art in London.
As
a printmaker, Hartrick was most interested
in lithography. He was a founder member of
the Senefelder Club in 1908.
Scrooge
with Marley’s Ghost
260 x 180 mm
Original two-colour lithograph.
Signed in pencil and entitled Scrooge.
Printed in black and sanguine on cream laid paper.
A little foxed in the borders within the mount opening.
Sold
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NATHANIEL
SPARKS
R.E.
Bristol 1880 – 1956 Somerton, Somerset
Though
most of Sparks’ etchings are concerned with landscape, architecture or
urban topography, and some portraits, between 1913 and 1929 he made ten plates
of a mystic and symbolic character.
The
Shadow and the Shade
153 x 90 mm
Original etching with drypoint and stipple,
1928.
Signed in pencil.
On thin wove. Slight
cockling.
Sold
Exhibited
at the Royal Academy in 1928, when Queen
Mary bought an impression.
The
title of The Shadow and the Shade relates
to the tradition of the early 7th century
conversion of King Edwin of Northumbria to
Christianity by St Paulinus, who in his arguments
compared life to a sparrow passing through
the king’s hall,
coming in at one window from the darkness, fluttering for a few moments in the
light and warmth of the hall and passing out of another window into the night.
In
Sparks’ etching the figure, bathed in light, stands in a landscape of Christian
symbols, in the shadow of the Cross against a dark sky lit by the star and the
Dove .
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EDWARD ARDIZZONE
Haiphong 1909 – 1979 Rodmersham Green, Kent
Street
Corner
Nicholas Ardizzone P 55
245 x 265 mm
Original lithograph, drawn on zinc, 1956.
Signed in pencil, entitled and numbered 18
from the edition of 30.
On wove. Faintly
time-stained within the previous mount window.
£1650
Ardizzone
made an etching and two lithographs of Soho
prostitutes in 1956, at a time when their
activity was provoking scandal that culminated
in the passing of the Street Offences Act
in 1958.
In
the lithographs he exploited the tonal possibilities
of the medium for rich and mysterious light
effects in keeping with images of “ladies of the night”.
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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 throughout his life.
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.
In
una sottile imprecise decisione
In a subtle
inexact decision
163 x 141 mm
Original etching
with aquatint, 2010.
An artist’s proof.
Signed in pencil, dated, entitled and annotated, as usual.
On cream wove.
Sold
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Click
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catalogue |
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