Art by Medium: Engraving

Drypoint etching on watermarked cream wove paper, 5 7/16 x 8 7/16 inches (39 x 215 mm), wide (perhaps full) margins. A very desirable, bright and richly inked impression, with the da...

SIR FRANCIS SEYMOUR HADEN (British 1818 -1910) SUNSET IN IRELAND 1863 (Schneiderman 47 - Appears to be an undescribed state between XI and XII) Etching and drypoint, signed in penci...

A luminous first state impression, Hamerton's "Portfolio" edition. Etching and drypoint on cream wove paper, 7 3/16 x 9 15/16 inches (135 x 213 mm), wide margins. First state (of 5)...

Etching and drypoint. Schneiderman 133.v/xi. 7 3/4 x 16 3/8 (sheet 9 1/4 x 17 1/2). A rich impression with plate tone printed in black/brown in on antique cream wove paper. Signed in...

Shere Mill Pond, No. II (large plate). 1860. Etching and drypoint. Schneiderman 37.v/ix. 7 x 13 1/8 (sheet 10 3/4 x 16 3/8). This state is prior to publication in Études à l'Eau-Forte. Illustrated: Keppel The Golden Age of Engraving; Print Collector's Quarterly 1 (1911): 18; : Guichard, British Etchers, 1850-1940. A rich, brilliant proof with drypoint burr printed on white laid paper. Signed in pencil. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shere Mill Pond, No. II was one of the most highly praised landscape prints of the etching revival. An impression was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1861 under Haden’s pseudonym, H. Dean. Francis Seymour Haden used this anagram of his own name early in his career as an artist, in order to retain his anonymity and preserve his professional reputation as a surgeon. Biography: Sir Francis Seymour Haden (16 September 1818 - 1 June 1910), was an English surgeon, best known as an etcher. He was born in London, his father, Charles Thomas Haden, being a well-known doctor and lover of music. He was educated at Derby School, Christ's Hospital, and University College, London, and also studied at the Sorbonne, Paris, where he took his degree in 1840. He was admitted as a member of the College of Surgeons in London in 1842. In 1843-1844, with his friends Duval, Le Cannes and Colonel Guibout, he travelled in Italy and made his first sketches from nature. Haden attended no art school and had no art teachers, but between 1845 and 1848 he studied portfolios of prints belonging to a second-hand dealer named Love, who had a shop in Bunhill Row, the old Quaker quarter of London. Arranging the prints in chronological order, he studied the works of the great original engravers, Albrecht Dürer, Lucas van Leyden and Rembrandt. These studies, besides influencing his original work, led to his important monograph on the etched work of Rembrandt. By lecture and book, and with the aid of the memorable exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1877, he tried to give a true reflection of Rembrandt's work, giving a nobler idea of the master's mind by taking away from the list of his works many dull and unseemly plates that had long been included in the lists. His reasons were founded upon the results of a study of the master's works in chronological order, and are clearly expressed in his monograph, The Etched Work of Rembrandt critically reconsidered, privately printed in 1877, and in The Etched Work of Rembrandt True and False (1895). Haden's printmaking was invigorated by his much younger brother-in-law, James Whistler, at the Haden home in Sloane Street in 1855. A press was installed there and for a while Haden and Whistler collaborated on a series of etchings of the Thames. The relationship and project did not last. Haden followed the art of original etching with such vigour that he became not only the foremost British exponent of that art but brought about its revival in England. His strenuous efforts and perseverance, aided by the secretarial ability of Sir WR Drake, resulted in the foundation of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers. As president he ruled the society with a strong hand from its first beginnings in 1880. Notwithstanding his study of the old masters of his art, Haden's own plates were very individual, and are particularly noticeable for a fine original treatment of landscape subjects, free and open in line, clear and well divided in mass, and full of a noble and dignified style of his own. Even when working from a picture his personality dominates the plate, as for example in the large plate he etched after J.M.W. Turner's "Calais Pier," which is a classical example of what interpretative work can do in black and white. Of his original plates, more than 250 in number, one of the most notable was the large "Breaking up of the Agamemnon." An early plate, rare and most beautiful, is "Thames Fisherman". "Mytton Hall" is broad in treatment, and a fine rendering of a shady avenue of yew trees leading to an old manor-house in sunlight. "Sub Tegmine" was etched in Greenwich Park in 1859; and "Early Morning--Richmond", full of the poetry and freshness of the hour, was done, according to Haden, actually at sunrise. One of the rarest and most beautiful of his plates is "A By-Road in Tipperary"; "Combe Bottom" is another; and "Shere Mill Pond" (both the small study and the larger plate), "Sunset in Ireland," "Penton Hook," "Grim Spain" and "Evening Fishing, Longparish," are also notable examples of his genius. A catalogue of his works was begun by Sir William Drake and completed by Harrington in 1880. During later years Haden began to practise the sister art...

Sir Francis Seymour Haden (1818-1910), Kensington Gardens (The Small Plate), drypoint, 1859, signed in pencil lower right. References: Harrington 12...

Mytton Hall. 1859. Etching and drypoint. Schneiderman catalog 19 state .iii/v. 4 13/16 x 10 5/16 (sheet 5 3/4 x 10 15/16). As published in Études à l'eau-forte XXIV. Illustrated: Guichard, British Etchers, 1850-1940. An extremely rich impression printed on fine laid paper. Signed in the plate. Housed in a 16 x 20-inch archival mat. Mytton Hall is a fifteenth century mansion house situated on the River Ribble, at Whalley near Blackburn, Lancashire. Haden used to stay there when he went salmon fishing. R. Gutekunst, the dealer who inherited the rights to sell all of Francis Seymour Haden's remaining prints upon his death, noted on the front of his catalogue in July 1911: "It may be useful to add that those impressions of Sir Seymour Haden's early and rare etchings, which were published in portfolio form in Paris in 1865-66, under the title Études à l'eau-forte have, with the exception of one or two sets, never been signed in autograph by Sir Seymour, and do not, of course, bear any stamp of any kind." Although Gutekunst had impressions of the majority of Haden's works for sale, he had no remaining impressions of Mytton Hall. Henry Taylor...

Beautiful proof on vergé crème, signed by the artist in pencil. Full margins. Ex-coll. H.H. Benedict (Lugt 1298). Ref. Cat. Harrington 221; Schneiderman 208.

Beautiful proof on verge, with note “Pl.194” and signed by the artist in pencil. Full margins. Ex-coll. H.H. Benedict (Lugt 1298), with dry stamp not identified. Ref. Cat. Harrington...

Beautiful proof on vélin fort, with stamp “Lugt 1048”. Full margins. Ref. Cat. Harrington 170; Schneiderman 163.