Benton Murdoch Spruance

Cat and Busybody

1933

A nostalgic image of a bucolic farmyard and thatched cottage, hearkening to a bygone era. c 1920. Etching with drypoint on laid watercolor paper with deckle edges, and an indiscerni...

New York: 1947. Etching on white wove paper, 7 x 5 inches (752 x125 mm), full margins. Signed and titled in pencil, lower margin. In very good condition with some minor spots of ligh...

Interiors I: Family Reunion 1984 Resist ground etching and engraving on BFK Rives wove paper, 20 x 36 inches (501 x 913 mm), full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 49/175 in pencil, lower margin. In excellent condition with minor mat tone. A luminous, rich, and well-inked impression of this haunting image, with astonishing detail and depth. Framed handsomely under museum grade glass with archival materials in a solid wood frame with silver finish. [Milton 107] Intended to be a stand alone image in its inception, Family Reunion ended up spawning seven additional images, and became a sort of Primo Pensiero in the sprawling, masterpiece suite now known as Interiors. The suite took eight years to complete, and consists of works of varying format, psychological intensity, and subject matter. The thematic darkness in the eight images waxes and wanes, and Milton intentionally included several interlude works to lighten the tension he felt while composing several of the darker images. The first two in the series, Family Reunion, and Hotel Paradise Café, were meant to be companion pieces. The equilibrium of each composition is anchored on a central brooding figure; a man (perhaps based on a Thomas Eakins portrait of the American anthropologist Frank Hamilton...

Resist ground etching and engraving on cream wove paper, 22 x 39 inches (558 x 990 mm), full margins. Signed, titled, dated, and numbered 27/160 in pencil, lower margin. With the blindstamp of the printer, Robert E. Townsend, in the lower left margin. A beautiful, richly inked impression of this highly detailed, large image. In very good condition with minor mat tone, extremely minor scattered light surface soiling, and one pin-point sized dot of brown discoloration on the lower left margin, recto, well outside of image area. [Milton 99]. Milton states that there is a metaphorical evolution at the root of his body of graphic work, and with Les Belles et la Bête, Before the Hunt, he found himself at a crossroads that he viewed as a sort of artistic adolescence, which he felt demanded a natural examination of mysteries of sexual awakening. The image is brimming with fantastical images and metaphors for the confrontation of sexual exploration; a Freudian analyst appears in the left of the image, scattered tableaus of paired figures...

Signed lower right, 'Charles Surendorf' for Charles Frederick Surendorf (American, 1906-1979), titled lower left, 'State Street, Columbia' and create...

2-color lithograph, edition 35, 1944, Fine and Looney 233. Signed, dated, titled and annotated 'Ed 35' in pencil. Initialed 'BS' in the image, lower right. A superb, richly inked im...

Dark House is a soft-ground etching with aquatint signed in pencil by the artist. This image is in the collection of the Detroit Institute of the Arts Printmaker Earl Horter, born in 1881 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, was known for his realistic etchings and aquatints of urban scenes, though he was also an illustrator and painter. As a teenager, he engraved stock certificates. He was essentially self-taught, though he did take an etching class when he moved to New York City in 1903 to work for an advertising agency. Horter had a one-man show in 1916 in New York City at the Frederick Keppel and Company gallery. He was given the exhibition by Carl Zigrosser, later the first Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Museum of Modern Art. Horter was back in Philadelphia in 1917, where he would remain until his death in 1940. He worked there as art director for the N. W. Ayer advertising firm from 1917-1923. Horter was a member of the Society of Illustrators. He exhibited at the Pan American Exposition in 1915 in San Francisco, California; the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; and the Philadelphia Print Club's National Exhibition of Prints; as well as Corcoran Gallery biennials from 1935 to 1939, in Washington, D.C. Horter is listed in "Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Artists"; "Who Was Who in American Art"; and Mallett's "Index of Artists". Though not a man of extraordinary means, Horter was a lover of modernist art, which he gradually purchased, creating an important collection, well ahead of its time in America, of Cubist and Precisionist works, as well as African sculpture and Native American artifacts. Artists Horter collected include Europeans Picasso, Braque, Duchamp and Brancusi, and Americans Charles Sheeler and Arthur B. Carles. He was a friend of Carles, as well as other artists and collectors such as Leopold Stokowski, conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra; Franklin Watkins; S. S. White; and Carroll Tyson...

'Set Pieces: Vanity of Trust', color lithograph, 1949, edition 40, Fine and Looney 279. Signed, titled, dated and numbered '23/40' in pencil. A fine, impression with fresh colors, on...