Drawer Prints and Multiples

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...

Marcel Gromaire (1892-1971) - The Painter. 1943, paper, lithograph, 56x46 cm

A fine impression, on cream wove paper, with full margins (5/8 to 1 3/8 inches), in excellent condition. Edition 20. Signed and dated in pencil. Annotated 'Bolton Brown...

This vintage 1930s black and white lithograph by Arnold Ronnebeck (1885-1947), a prominent Colorado artist from the WPA era, beautifully captures the Grand Lake...

"The Meeting of Her Majesty's Stag Hounds on Ascot Heath" is a large colorful mezzotint engraving of an extensive British hunting scene. It was created by Sir Francis Grant...

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 very good impression of this lithograph, from an edition of 250. Signed in pencil by Covarrubias. Published by Associated American Artists, New York.

Little is known about the artist, Edward (Ed) Sacks, although this print may have been made at the Art Students League in NYC. it is a cross between, as the title suggests, a Seated ...

A moody evening in New York City. The buildings capture the quiet that New York sometimes achieves. Signed and dated in pencil.

"Models & Horses" is an original color lithograph by Philip Pearlstein. The artist signed the piece lower left and it is edition 15/140. This piece features two nude female models lo...

Mary Lightfoot was born in Ravenna, Texas. She studied at the College of Industrial Arts in Denton and the North Texas State Teachers College prior to receiving a master of arts degree from Columbia University. Her entire teaching career was with the Dallas Public School system; she summered in Europe...