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"
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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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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 third and final page of images selected
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from this catalogue.
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HEINRICH ALDEGREVER
Paderborn, Westphalia c1501/02 – c1555/61 Soest
Hercules
and the Hind
New Hollstein 95
108 x 69 mm
Original engraving, 1550.
The plate signed
with the monogram and dated.
A good impression.
Trimmed to the plate. Some foxing.
Sold
Provenance:
a duplicate from the Kunsthalle, Bremen (Lugt
293)
The
last subject in Aldegrever’s cycle of The
Labours of Hercules (Holl.83-95), of which complete sets of the entire thirteen engravings are very rarely found. Though generally sequenced as Hercules’ third labour, Aldegrever combined Hercules’ capture of the golden hind of Artemis (Diana), with the ultimate death and implied apotheosis of the hero, logical in the final plate. The detail of the funeral pyre consumed by the bolt from Jupiter, is copied, in reverse, from the final print (Holl.109) in Sebald Beham’s Hercules cycle engraved two years previously in 1548.
The
huge Ceryneian hind, sacred to Artemis, could
run faster than an arrow. Hercules was tasked
to take it alive and chased it on foot for
a year before succeeding. (So as not to fall
foul of Artemis he subsequently also cunningly
arranged its release.)
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Attributed
to NICOLÒ BOLDRINI
Vicenza c1500 – after 1566
after TITIAN
Pieve di Cadore c1487 – 1576 Venice
Very
little is known of Boldrini but he is generally
considered to have been the cutter of Titian’s woodcuts. And, though unsigned, Titian is the accepted author of the caricature of the Laocoon.
The
Hellenistic marble of Laocoon and his sons,
one of the most artistically influential
of antique ‘finds’, was unearthed in Rome in 1506. Acquired by Pope Julius II, it was set up in the Belvedere Garden in the Vatican.
In
the woodcut the monkey Laocoon group is probably
based directly on a drawing by Titian (not
extant and known only through the woodcut),
and the background Titianesque landscape
improvised at a remove.
Caricature
of the Laocoon
Rosand & Muraro (Titian and the Venetian Woodcut ) 40
268 x 402 mm (sheet)
Woodcut, c1540.
Trimmed just outside the borderline. A couple of wormhole printing failures in the image and the border with several breaks.
Pressed centrefold, split at the foot.
Sold
Ex
collection: Joshijiro Urushibara.
Titian
admired and owned a cast of the ‘real’ Laocoon group. The reason for his producing a travesty of the statue, with monkies acting out the tragic end of Laocoon and his sons, is still debated.
Modern
interpretations include a satire related
to the Vesalian-Galenist controversy (Vesalius,
professor of surgery at Padua 1537-42, charged
the classical and venerated anatomist Galen,
with never having dissected a human body
but basing his description of the body’s
structure on that of apes); and most recently
on the Renaissance aesthetic challenge between
art and nature.
Titian
himself adopted as his motto Natura Potentior
Ars (“Art more powerful than Nature”) and his Laocoon caricature image can be seen as a reversal of Boccaccio’s definition of Art as the “ape of nature” (ars
simian naturae). Here, Nature, in the form of the apes, is imitating Art.
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ALFRED
HUGH FISHER
A.R.E.
London 1867 – 1945 London
London
- The Strand - June 22, 1897
251 x 143 mm
Original etching, 1897.
The full date etched
in the plate. Signed in pencil.
On laid paper watermarked OWP&ACL.
£150
Queen
Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Procession took
place on June 22 1897. Fisher shows the
procession moving along the Strand, passing
the church of St Clement Danes swathed in
flags, and the Law Courts.
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LOVIS CORINTH
Tapiau, East Prussia 1858 – 1925 Zandvoort, Holland
Corinth
favoured lithography as a graphic medium
in his later, Expressionist, years, particularly
for book illustrations. He drew the lithographs
for Die Frau Konnetable (Schwarz 143), illustrations
to Balzac’s La Connestable (The High Constable’s Wife) in 1913, though they were not published in book form till 1922.
They were first published separately as a
portfolio of prints, individually pencil
signed, in an edition of 50. The following
item is from that edition.
The
High Constable’s Wife is one of Balzac’s Contes
drolatiques (Droll Stories, collected from the Abbeys of Touraine), bawdy tales written in imitation of Rabelais.
Balzac
ended his tale of the High Constable’s Wife with a summary of the moral to be drawn from the story.
As
this book should, according to the maxims
of great ancient authors, join certain useful
things to the good laughs which you will
find therein and contain precepts of high
taste, I beg to inform you that the quintessence
of the story is this: That women need never
lose their heads in serious cases, because
the God of Love never abandons them, especially
when they are beautiful, young, and of good
family; and that gallants when going to keep
an amorous assignation should never go there
like giddy young men, but carefully, and
keep a sharp look-out near the burrow, to
avoid falling into certain traps and to preserve
themselves; for after a good woman the most
precious thing is, certes, a pretty gentleman.
Der
Konnetable mit seine Frau
The Constable with
his wife
Schwarz 143 A VII b
165 x 85 mm
Original lithograph, 1913.
Signed in pencil.
From the edition of 50.
On japan. One minute
fox mark (related to a paper impurity?)
£150
The
Constable with his wife – and the decapitated head of her lover
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GERALD SPENCER PRYSE
Ashton, Wales 1882 – 1956 Stourton, Worcs.
Trained
in London and Paris, Pryse had his first
success at the Venice International Exhibition
in 1907.
A socialist, the same year he joined
the Fabian Society. And in 1907 too Pryse
helped found The Neolith, a fairly short-lived
periodical produced by members of the Senefelder
Club, entirely printed in lithography and
containing original lithographs by the Senefelder
Club artists.
Pryse’s Poverty was included in the second issue of The Neolith, 1908.
Poverty
345 x 247 mm
Original two-colour lithograph, 1908.
As published, unsigned, in issue Number II
of The Neolith.
Printed in mushroom brown
and black on smooth cream wove.
A
supported tear through the bottom margin.
£100
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EDMUND BLAMPIED
R.E.
Ville Brée, Jersey 1886 – 1966 St Aubin
Though
he was settled in London, Blampied’s prints drew on his childhood memories
of life in his native Jersey, viewed with humorous affection.
Fisherman’s
Pet
Campbell Dodgson 81
253 x 229 mm
Original drypoint, 1923.
Signed in pencil.
Edition of 100.
On Whatman hand-made wove paper.
Faintly light-stained overall, a single small
fox mark.
£1000
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VERNON HILL
Halifax 1887 – 1972
Hill
was an illustrator, sculptor and engraver.
Sisyphus
163 x 126 mm
Original etching, c1926.
Unsigned proof in an early state.
Printed in brown-black ink on cream laid paper
watermarked Antique de luxe.
Ink stains.
£285
Sisyphus
was the founder and ruler of Corinth. A trickster
of legendary cunning, he even cheated early
death (or the gods of the underworld) and
lived to die naturally in old age. But thereafter
in Hades he was condemned to eternally roll
a great boulder up a hill.
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OROVIDA Pissarro
Epping 1893 – 1968 London
Orovida’s earliest etchings, in 1914, were of tigers, panthers, jaguar and leopard, subjects that remained favourites with her to over the years. The domestic cat only caught her attention briefly in the late 1940’s, when she etched seven plates with cats as their subject in a four year period. Her ‘domestic’ cats reveal their ‘wild’ ancestry.
Cat & Mouse
Ashmolean Supp (Orovida manuscript) 95
315 x 187 mm
Original etching, 1948.
Signed in pencil, dated and entitled.
Printed by David Strang on Arches laid paper (Eragny Press paper? – additional watermark , two leaves in a circle, with lines) in brown-black ink, with plate tone.
One of only 20 proofs printed.
£850
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(THOMAS)
EDWIN LA DELL
A.R.A.
Coventry 7 January 1914 – 27 June 1970 Maidstone
Principally
a colour lithographer, La Dell was appointed
senior tutor at the Royal College of Art
in 1948 and retained his connection with
the college until he died.
A
Souvenir of Trier
543 x 424 mm
Original etching, c1966.
Signed in pencil and entitled.
A dedicated proof for Hans & Elspeth.
On wove. A few handling defects in the margins.
Sold
A
record of a holiday trip to the Moselle valley,
which although showing the Roman Porta Negra,
concentrates largely on the wines enjoyed.
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