Robe Animal Prints

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...

The etching "The Game of Transformation. Butterflies" is an artist's play with meanings and associations. In this work, modern girls are presented in the form of glamorous fluttering...

Water Mill (after the drawing by J.M.W. Turner, R.A., 1775-1851). 1885. Mezzotint. Hardie 3.ii. With the publication line. 7 x 10 1/8 (sheet 12 1/4 x 16 5/8...

A Yorkshire Dell or The Heron’s Pool. (after J.M.W. Turner, R.A., 1775-1851.) Soft-ground etching and mezzotint. Hardie 85. mezzotint over etching on India paper printed on chine-co...

Crane Walking Along Shore, Color Nature Photography by Geoffrey Baris Archival pigment print on museum fine art paper Edition of 7 Includes certificate of authenticity. Signed and n...

Medaglia d'Oro (foaled April 11, 1999) is an American Thoroughbred racehorse who won several major stakes races including the 2002 Travers Stakes and the 2003 Whitney Handicap. He also finished second in the 2002 Belmont Stakes, the Breeders' Cup Classic in both 2002 and 2003, and the 2004 Dubai World Cup. Since retiring to stud, he has become an excellent stallion whose progeny include 2009 Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra, two-time champion filly Songbird and two-time Hong Kong Horse of the Year Golden Sixty. Medaglia d'Oro - 'Whiskers' by John Reardon...

From his series SHADOW CARTOONS. Color iris print, hand initialed in pencil, This is not numbered. It is on Somerset watermarked archival paper Paper size is 30 X 22.25, images 22.7...

Hugues Merle was a French painter who mostly depicted sentimental or moral subjects. Samuel Cousins was a highly regarded mezzotint engraver. 350mm by 2...

This artwork titled "Rabbit Series #2" 1980, is an original mezzotint with embossing by noted Hungarian artist Radovan Kragulj, b.1935. It is hand signed, dated, titled and numbered 7/50 in pencil by the artist. The sheet size is 25.5 x 19.5 inches is in excellent condition. About the artist: Radovan Kraguly...

this impression is #46 from edition of 50 Mezzotint artist Mikio Watanabe was born in 1954 in Japan and currently lives in France. He is most known for his elegant, evocative black ...

Edition of 7 "Benchwork" is part of Wegman's artistic exploration of photography and staged scenes. The artwork is representative of Wegman's distinctive approach to photography, wh...

Lois Ward created a Fragile Series of images including "Crushed Beetle" in 1990 in a very small edition of just 9. This impression is #1 of 9. Ward has always been concerned with t...