Art by Medium: Mezzotint

Joan Miro - 1964 Dimensions: 30 x 20 cm Edition of 200 (one of the 200 on Vélin de Rives) reserved for collaborators, there was also a larger edition of 2000 From "Prints from the Mo...

Joan Miro - Abstract Composition - Original Lithograph 1964 Dimensions: 30 x 20 cm Edition of 200 (one of the 200 on Vélin de Rives) Mourlot Press, 1964 Biography Joan Miró i Fer...

Marc Chagall - Cover - Original Lithograph 1964 Dimensions: 30 x 20 cm Edition of 200 (one of the 200 on Vélin de Rives) Mourlot Press, 1964 Marc Chagall (born in 1887) Marc Chaga...

Alexander Calder - Rocks and Sun - Original Lithograph From the literary review "XXe Siècle" 1952 Dimensions: 32 x 24 cm Publisher: G. di San Lazzaro. Unsigned and unnumbered as issued

A Fierce Bull. 1911. Drypoint. Hardie 108. 5 3/8 x 8 (sheet 8 5/16 x 11 7/8). Edition 8. An exceptional impression with rich drypoint burr printed on antique laid paper. A proof of t...

"Que pico de Oro" (What a Golden Beak) - Etching and Aquatint on Paper 5th or 8th edition print of "Que pico de Oro" from the Los Caprichos with burnished aquatints, drypoints etchi...

This colorful lithograph after Pablo Picasso was printed by the Atelier Mourlot in Paris in 1964 and is unsigned*. This image is taken from a drawing in pencil and colored chalk enti...

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...

Amsterdam IX is an intriguing early career aquatint dry-needle etch print by renowned French-Dutch artist Olivier Julia. It depicts a detail of an old Amsterdam house facade and is b...

This is an original antique colored botanical mezzotint and line engraving of flowering Red Sweet Peas which is finished with hand-coloring. It is entitled "Lathyrus Flore Majore Pur...

This is an original antique hand-colored botanical mezzotint and line engraving of flowering Chrysanthemum matricaria plants. It is entitled "A. Chrysanthemum Matricarice Folus Flore...

This colorful modern lithographic poster by Wassily Kandinsky was printed in 1972 at the Atelier Mourlot in Paris to promote an exhibition of his watercolors and drawings at the Gale...