Norbertine Bresslern-Roth

LOBSTER and OCTOPUS (KAMPF - BATTLE)

c. 1928

OTTO MUELLER (German 1874 – 1930) POTSDAMER KUNSTSOMMER, 1921 (1968) (Karsch 6) Woodcut. Edition of 25 and numbered 11. There are no known impressio...

FRANCES H. GEARHART and Sisters (THE GEARHARTS) SEA TREASURES...

MAXIMILLIAN KURZWEIL (Austrian 1867-1916) DER POLSTER / THE CUSHION, 1903. Color woodcut printed on laid japon paper, affixed as usual to a support sheet from its upper sheet edge...

ROBERT PHILIPPI (Austrian 1877-1959) LIEBESPAAR (LOVERS) ca.1923 (in Rifkind Collection, LACMA: From a portfolio of 10 prints. Rifkind indicates the e...

The Lobster is an aquatint and drypoint print on chine from one of the deluxe copies of Picasso's 1942 Histoire Naturelle - Textes de Buffon series. The image size is 10.6 x 7.9 inches, unsigned as issued, and framed in a contemporary silver and gray moulding. One of about 36 prints that exist with Picasso's remarqued title in French, from the edition of 262 (there were 226 portfolios, some with additional sets on varying papers). Catalogue - Cramer #37 The exceptional etchings from Picasso’s Histoire Naturelle – Textes de Buffon are a masterful combination of sugar-lift aquatint and drypoint, showcasing a full range of gray tonalities. The etchings of animals, birds and insects are considered some of the most beautiful and most unusual examples of Picasso’s graphic work. Roger Lacourière, Picasso’s master printer, pulled the prints for each etching between 1939-1942. It was Lacourière who taught Picasso the sugar-lift aquatint technique which allowed him to mimic the effect of brushstrokes in these etched images. Picasso first explored the technique in his plates for the Vollard Suite, but it was in the creation of the Buffon images that he fully realized its stunning, painterly potential. For the edition, 226 portfolios were produced with the first thirty-six counting as deluxe compilations. These rare deluxe sets were on diverse papers (chine, japon or vergé ancien) and each included a complete additional suite showing Picasso’s title remarques along the bottom. As such, the remarqued versions of the prints are quite rare with just thirty-six of each produced for the edition (with the exception of The Wolf which is never remarqued – the image always fills the entire etching plate). These prints are based on the writings of French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, who extensively documented the natural world in his monumental work Histoire Naturelle. Picasso’s association with the project to illustrate parts of the Buffon came during a tumultuous time in European history – the prelude to, and early years of, World War II. As the continent was ravaged, Picasso lived through the disaster in Paris, which the Germans occupied in 1940. These prints could be seen as a political statement – Picasso channeling his artistic expression into a form of resistance art...

In the 1950s and 60s Grambs worked on many commissions. This ink drawing with a lobster, crab, and a shrimp, was probably for a cookbook; the sheet is cut in a free-form, modernist...

This original antique print shows the Slipper lobster, Scyllarides squammosus 1, homard lobster, Homarus gammarus 2, pitu shrimp, Macrobrachium carcinus 3, and spiny lobster...

'Crustacea' Copper-line engraving with original hand-colouring. From Baron Georges Cuvier's (1769-1832) 'Animal Kingdom', published in London in 1837. 210mm by 130mm (sheet)