Peter Milton

Les Belles et La Bête I: The Rehearsal

1977

Resist ground etching and engraving on cream wove paper, 22 x 39 inches (558 x 990 mm), full margins. Signed, titled, dated, and numbered 27/160 in pencil, lower margin. With the blindstamp of the printer, Robert E. Townsend, in the lower left margin. A beautiful, richly inked impression of this highly detailed, large image. In very good condition with minor mat tone, extremely minor scattered light surface soiling, and one pin-point sized dot of brown discoloration on the lower left margin, recto, well outside of image area. [Milton 99]. Milton states that there is a metaphorical evolution at the root of his body of graphic work, and with Les Belles et la Bête, Before the Hunt, he found himself at a crossroads that he viewed as a sort of artistic adolescence, which he felt demanded a natural examination of mysteries of sexual awakening. The image is brimming with fantastical images and metaphors for the confrontation of sexual exploration; a Freudian analyst appears in the left of the image, scattered tableaus of paired figures...

Interiors I: Family Reunion 1984 Resist ground etching and engraving on BFK Rives wove paper, 20 x 36 inches (501 x 913 mm), full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 49/175 in pencil, lower margin. In excellent condition with minor mat tone. A luminous, rich, and well-inked impression of this haunting image, with astonishing detail and depth. Framed handsomely under museum grade glass with archival materials in a solid wood frame with silver finish. [Milton 107] Intended to be a stand alone image in its inception, Family Reunion ended up spawning seven additional images, and became a sort of Primo Pensiero in the sprawling, masterpiece suite now known as Interiors. The suite took eight years to complete, and consists of works of varying format, psychological intensity, and subject matter. The thematic darkness in the eight images waxes and wanes, and Milton intentionally included several interlude works to lighten the tension he felt while composing several of the darker images. The first two in the series, Family Reunion, and Hotel Paradise Café, were meant to be companion pieces. The equilibrium of each composition is anchored on a central brooding figure; a man (perhaps based on a Thomas Eakins portrait of the American anthropologist Frank Hamilton...

Interiors VII: The Train from Munich Robert E. Townsend, 1991. Resist ground etching and engraving with hand refinement in charcoal, pencil, stabilo, and eraser on BFK Rives white wove paper, 20 x 36 inches (507 x 914 mm), full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 51/175 by the artist in pencil, lower margin. A brilliant, inky impression with luminous light and gradient tones. In excellent condition with one extremely minor and superficial spot of light tan adhesive residue on the verso, unobtrusive and not visible on the recto, with no other visible defects. With the blind stamp of the printer, Robert E. Townsend in the lower left margin. An especially fine impression in superb condition. [Milton 113]. When asked about this work in particular, Milton expressed that his favorite images were his darkest images, in theme, mood, and in ink. Milton, who has said that his work is infused with a postmodern awareness of the past, has focused here in a deeply personal way on a segment of history that continues to haunt us all. The work, published in 1991, evokes one of the darkest periods of European history, the eroding and erasing of European culture under fascism, and the eventual total loss of humanity. The Train from Munich is an especially relevant and emotional work for Milton, who created the piece for his wife, Edith, who escaped Munich in 1939 as a child on the fabled Kinderstransport. The Kinderstransport was a desperate rescue effort on the part of the British government to save as many Jewish children as possible by railway before borders closed on the precipice of the Second World War. Children left their parents behind, and boarded the trains alone, leaving the impending doom of Nazi Germany, they arrived in Great Britain as refugees. More than 10,000 children escaped the holocaust via the Kinderstransport. In Train from Munich, the image itself holds an almost immeasurable amount of symbolism; each inch of the matrix is a successful effort to confront this history in a way that is poignant through a series of motifs. We see the Café disappearing into a ghostlike memory of the past, an allegory to the disintegration of culture, while through the windows we can see a rampant, snarling dog; a portrait of Hitler's shepherd, Blondi. Blondi isn't the only notable figure in the composition. Milton has pointed out that the fading figure of the doorman at the Hotel Metropole is modeled after the artist and intellectual Marcel Duchamp, and the face of the young girl peering...

Points of Departure II: Nijinsky Variations Robert E. Townsend, 1996 Resist-ground etching and engraving on BFK-Rives paper, 24 x 38 inches (618 x 965 mm), full margins. Signed, ti...

An enchanting Southern landscape by the mother of the Charleston Renaissance. A native of Charleston, South Carolina, and educated under the tutelage of Thomas Anshutz at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, O'Neill Verner was a teacher, a mother, an artist, an ardent preservationist, and a skilled autodidact. Having previously focused on painting, in the early 1920s she found herself deeply moved by printmaking as a media, and especially so by the simple, peaceful themes and tableaus she discovered in Japanese art. She embarked on a effort to teach herself Japanese printmaking techniques, and in the process, produced the charming images of every day life in Charleston and its environs that earned her recognition as a cultural icon in her day, and in more modern times, as the mother of the Charleston Renaissance, which flourished well into the 1930s. In 1923 she opened a studio in Charleston where she focused on documenting the local color and the architecture and landscape that distinguishes Charleston as one of the South's most beautiful cities, all the while applying the gentle and poetic thematic sensibilities of Japanese printmaking. O'Neill Verner soon found herself in high demand when municipalities and institutions throughout the country sought commissions from her to document the beauty of their grounds and historic buildings. She worked as far north as the campuses of Harvard and Princeton, and extensively across the South, including in Savannah, Georgia, where through sweeping commissions she was able to marry her love of southern preservation and art. O'Neill Verner was a lifelong learner, and continued a path of edification that led her to study etching at the Central School of Art in London, to travel extensively through Europe, and to visit Japan in 1937, where she studied sumi (brush and ink) painting. She was a founding member of the Charleston Etchers Club, and the Southern States Art League. Her works are represented in the permanent collections of leading museums across the American south, and in major national institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boston's Museum of Fine Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. O'Neil Verner...

Lift ground and hard ground etching and engraving on Murillo white wove paper, 18 x 24 inches (455 x 608 mm), full margins. Signed, dated, titled and numbered 60/100 in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by the artist. In very good condition with minor age tone and scattered light surface soiling on the verso. Framed handsomely in an original Kulicke welded aluminum frame with the embossed maker's mark. [Milton 61]. Milton revisited this image in 1974 during an experiment to explore collage and the process of contact printing a high resolution photo-transparency directly onto a copper plate. He printed a small detail transparency of Mornings with Judd onto the existing plate, alongside it's larger self, and broke through to a new photo-resist approach, which Milton described as "piquant and irresistible," in his essays appearing in Robert Flynn...

York Avenue, Sunday Morning. 1939. Drypoint. Kraeft 78. 7 3/4 x 12 7/8 (sheet 8 x 12). Edition 100. Provenance: Estate of David Llewellyn Reese, New York. ...

Rio del Santi Apostoli, Venice. 1930. Etching. Fletcher 226 catalog state .ii. 8 x 6 (sheet 9 3/4 x 14 1/4). Edition 100 (+ 10 trial proofs). Italian series #4. Illustrated: Dorothy ...

Enchanted Doorway, Venezia (La Porta della Carta, Venezia '29). 1930. Etching. Fletcher catalog 227 state ii. 12 3/8 x 6 9/16 (sheet 15 13/16 x 9 15/16). Edition 148 in this state (...

1930. Etching and aquatint. Fletcher catalog 229 state g ii. 10 1/8 x 12 (sheet 11 5/8 x 16 1/2). Italian Series, plate #16. Edition 140 (+ 14 trial proofs). Illustrated: Dorothy Noy...

The Balcony (Venetian Gateway). 1931. Etching. Fletcher catalog 237 state iii. 8 1/16 x 5 1/16 (sheet 12 5/8 x 10 1/16). Edition 110 (plus 34 trial proofs)...

From the Ponte Vecchio, Florence. 1925. Etching and aquatint. Fletcher catalog 159. state ii. Image: 11 1/8 x 15 1/4 (sheet 13 3/8 x 18 1/4). Edition 160 in this state (total edition...