Art by Medium: Bromoil

David Shrigley, Wine, 2021 Hand-signed and dated on the reverse Edition 29 of 125 75 x 56 cm Screenprint in colours Private Collection UK

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...

After Gustav Klimt, Max Eisler #7, Malcesine am Gardasee; multi-color collotype after 1913 painting in oil on canvas. The original was destroyed by fire ...

After Gustav Klimt, Max Eisler #9, Haus Im Garten; aka Forester’s House in Weissenbach II; multi-color collotype after 1914 painting in oil on canvas. GUSTAV KLIMT EINE NACHLESE (GU...

A unique oil print by Romare Bearden circa 1980. A bright city scene illustrated in a modern expressionist style. Artist: Romare Bearden, American (1911 - 1988) Title: Bridgetown, ...

Chaim SOUTINE (1893-1943) French Riviera : View of Cagnes Stone lithograph after a painting (Mourlot workshop) Unsigned On Arches vellum 50 x 65 cm (c. 20 x 26 inch) Excellent cond...

David Shrigley, I Can Sing For You, 2022 Hand-signed and dated on the reverse Edition 76 of 125 75 x 56 cm Screenprint in colours Private Collection UK

'Einsiedlerkrebse' (Hermit crabs) German wood-engraving, circa 1895. 240mm by 155mm (sheet)

Artist: Hunt Slonem Title: Lobster Year: 1980 Medium: Screenprint, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 250; AP 30 Image: 19 x 19 inches Paper Size: 22 x 30 inches

DAS WERK GUSTAV KLIMTS, a portfolio of 50 prints, ten of which are multicolor collotypes on chine colle paper laid down on hand-made heavy cream wove paper with deckled edges; under ...

DAS WERK GUSTAV KLIMTS, a portfolio of 50 prints, ten of which are multicolor collotypes on chine colle paper laid down on hand-made heavy cream wove paper with deckled edges; under ...

After Gustav Klimt, Max Eisler Plate #8, Litzlberg on Lake Attersee; blue monochrome collotype after the 1915 painting in oil on canvas. GUSTAV KLIMT EINE NACHLESE (GUSTAV KLIMT AN ...