Mezzotint Still-life Prints

Rio Osmarin shows boats on the canal Rio de S. Provolo o de l'Osmarin in Venice) It was created in 2006 and this impression is #31 of 75 It is signed, titled, numbered and dated by...

In "Destinations", Frederick Mershimer creates an image of taxis rushing by the Fuller Building, better known as Flatiron Building. The building is only six feet wide at its rounded...

This colored botanical mezzotint and line engraving finished with hand coloring by Johann Wilhelm Weinmann (1683-1741) is entitled "A. Ephemerum Virginianu flore Purpureo, B. Ephemer...

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...

In "Still Night", Frederick Mershimer depicts a row of brownstone houses on Seventh Avenue near Flatbush Avenue between Park and Stirling Places. Mershimer remembers that as he was ...

The repetition of patterns and rhythm is present in almost every piece of Pedro´s work. The hybrid topographies that Pedro Friedeberg´s unclassifiable practice recreates we must rec...

The repetition of patterns and rhythm is present in almost every piece of Pedro´s work. The hybrid topographies that Pedro Friedeberg´s unclassifiable practice recreates we must rec...

MARTA WAKUŁA-MAC: Master of Arts in Fine Art Education- Diploma in Fine Art Printmaking at the Institute of Art, Pedagogical University, Krakow, 2003. Member of Graphic Studio Dubl...

This hand-colored botanical mezzotint and line engraving by Johann Wilhelm Weinmann (1683-1741) is entitled "A. Lathyrus Major Peremis Richern B. Lathyrus Narbonensis Flore Albescen...

In "Late Night", Frederick Mershimer created a winter scene where Berkeley Place meets Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn's Park Slope. This image, the seventh in t...

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 view of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges is looking down "Plymouth Street" to the intersection of Jay Street. It is #35 in the catalogue raisonne by Retif & Salzer and is in the permanent collection of the Museum of City of New York...