Kazuhisa Honda Art

Leonard Merchant's mezzotint, "Snail in Cup" is inscribed for fellow artist, Fritz Eichenberg. While a student at the Central School for Arts and Crafts in London, a young Leonard Marchant found an engraving rocker in a cupboard and proceeded to turn himself into a master of the painstaking art of mezzotinting. Marchant, who has died in Shrewsbury aged 70, grew up in Simonstown, the Royal Navy's enclave in South Africa. Though his first job was as a parliamentary messenger, he taught himself to paint and, aged 19, was given a one-man show in Cape Town. Fired by this success, he left for England to study painting and, he claimed, to escape the stifling home atmosphere created by his Catholic mother and aunts. (His father was killed in the second world war.) Without contacts in London, he phoned Jacob Epstein, whose recommendation resulted in a grant to study briefly at the Central School. It was later, when studying full-time at the Central, that he saw the mezzotints of the Japanese master, Yozo Hamaguchi, in a London gallery. He was hooked. Creating a mezzotint is tedious in the extreme. The copper plate must first be prepared with a "rocker" which roughens the surface. A plate may be "rocked" 30 or 40 times. The rough texture is then reduced with a burnisher and a scraper, allowing the print a range of tones from velvety black through the greys to white. Marchant's plates could be months in the making. But the technical demands were the least of his worries. In its 18th- and 19th-century heyday, mezzotint was solely a reproductive medium, for copying masters such as Reynolds and Turner. The development of photography rendered it unfashionable, and by the 1960s the technique, known as la manière anglaise, was a bygone medium. Marchant, by now a teacher in printmaking at the Central, began to create original mezzotints with a colleague, Radavan Kraguly. A perfectionist, he seemed to revel in the straitjacket procedure. Perhaps it was the metaphor of bringing darkness out of light that appealed to this straight-talking, sometimes sombre, man, who would suddenly relax and light up like a gleaming hue on one of his prints. His work was of squares and triangles with the occasional cat, black and ominous, and carefully arranged still lifes, featuring plants, a seed pod, a pot he might have bought at auction to celebrate the sale of a print. There were one-man shows, notably at the Bankside Gallery. He sold well at the Royal Academy summer exhibition, was a Florence Biennale prizewinner, spent a fellowship year at the British School in Rome, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. But making mezzotints was not a paying job. Marchant and his South African wife...

In "Still Night", Frederick Mershimer depicts a row of brownstone houses on Seventh Avenue near Flatbush Avenue between Park and Stirling Places. Mershimer remembers that as he was ...

Edge of the Woods. 1916. Drypoint. 7 7/8 x 9 3/4 (sheet 10 7/16 x 13 1/8). A rich impression in printed on Japanese paper with an oak leaf watermark. Signed and annotated '3rd state'...

Python is a hand-pulled mezzotint in an edition of 25. This is #7/25. Jacob Crook was born in St. Louis, MO in 1985. Crook works primarily in the intagli...

Rio Osmarin shows boats on the canal Rio de S. Provolo o de l'Osmarin in Venice) It was created in 2006 and this impression is #31 of 75 It is signed, titled, numbered and dated by...

David Shapiro (American, b. 1922) Waterfall I (de-accessioned from the Denver Art Museum), 1979 Spit-bite etching, drypoint and carborundrum on Lanaquerelle...

Royal Insurance Building of Canada. (Royal Globe Insurance Company Building) 1927. Drypoint. 12 x 6 1/2 (sheet 17 1/2 x 10 1/2). A rich impression with selective plate tone printed in black/brown ink on cream wove paper. Signed in pencil. Housed in a 20 x 16-inch archival mat, suitable for framing. Rosenberg's first published print of 1927 was a drypoint of the Royal Insurance Building of Canada in New York. From his personal journal, we know that it was executed on January 18th in London and that 108 proofs were printed on 'modern' paper and signed. The alternate name of the building is the Royal Globe Insurance Company Building. It is located in the financial district of Manhattan, 150 William Street to Gold...

Manhattan Nocturne. 1938. Etching and drypoint. Kraeft 70. 7 1/8 x 11 7/8 (sheet 10 1/2 x 15 1/4). Edition 100. Presentation Print of the Society of American Etchers, 1938. Provenanc...

This Holiday wreath adorns the door of a Brooklyn Mansion Frederick Mershimer (American, b. 1958) Moody, mysterious, majestic – these are some of the ways to describe the mezzotint...

Souto named this image Bambalina (backstage). It is an exclusive publication of Stone and Press Gallery. Francisco Souto was born in Venezuela. He received a BFA from Herron Schoo...

Drift is a hand-pulled mezzotint in an edition of 10. This is #3/10. Location is Jarnigan ST in Starksville, Mississippi Jacob Crook was born in St. Loui...

Ravaux used the rule of threes to show 3 pieces of Christmas ivy floating below three sources of light. Christine Ravaux is a Belgian artist who uses nature in much of her work whic...