Rodent Still-life 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...

Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, Plate No. 39; Unidentified tree with moth, caterpillar and pupa. The Netherlands: 1705....

Guy Allen Labrador and Bumblebee Original Etching and Gold Leaf on Paper Image size: 20cm x 30cm Edition size: 75 Please note the price is for the unframed original etching. Please n...

Guy Allen Grazing Horse Study Gold An etching, aquatint and hand finished gold leaf on 300gsm Somerset paper. Edition Size: 75 Year Completed: 2017 Image Size: H 19.5cm x W 13.5cm Paper Size: 56 x 39 cm Sold Unframed (Please note that in situ images are purely an indication of how a piece may look)Please note the price is for the unframed original etching . Grazing Horse Study Gold is an original etching, engraved onto a copper plate, from which Guy Allen creates an impression of ink onto paper. To create his pieces, Guy Allen marries the traditional technique of etching with timeless subject matter and print making processes, for a more contemporary twist. This etching is a study piece for the large Grazing Horse artwork...

Jane Peart Elephant Family Limited Edition Etching Print Edition of 100 Image Size: H 14cm x W 11cm Signed Sold Unframed Please note that in situ images are purely an indication of h...

Acanthus Print - Screen Print Paper size 22.75'' x 21.75'' inches Image size 12" x 12" inches Edition: signed in pencil, titled, dated and marked 38/125 Donald Sultan The work of...

Artist: Hunt Slonem, American (1951 - ) Title: Ocelot Medium: Serigraph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: AP 30 Image Size: 27.5 x 24 inches Size: 31 in. x 26.5 in. (78.7...

Guy Allen Bumblebee Etching Edition Size: 75 Year Completed: 2019 Image Size Diameter: 28cm Approximate Size if Framed: H50cm x W50cm Sold Unframed (Please note that in situ images a...

Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, Plate No. 6; Thistle and Moths. The Netherlands: 1705. Engraving with hand coloring in w...

Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, Plate No. 26; Cocoa plant, caterpillar, pupa, and butterflies. The Netherlands: 1705. En...

Cedar (small), 2022 Screenprint on Somerset Velvet Antique 280gsm hand-signed and numbered 47.5 x 38 cm 52 x 45 cm - framed Edition 79 of 150 To commemorate Ai Weiwei’s gift of a tr...

Green shell lithograph of a cone shell. Print is edition 33 of 34. Signed and dated by the artist along with titled. Print is framed in a golden frame...