The New Neutrals

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...

Lesley Anne Spowart (American, born 1957) "Kinetic II" 2025 Mixed media, acrylic paint, and oil paint on paper glued over board Signed by the artist at the bottom right corner and on...

Title: Sunbeam Serenity Painting Animal Dogs Modern Gold Contemporary Striking Invest Energy Nature Blue This painting forms part of an artwork series called BLUE. I borrowed from ...

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...

"Dancing with" Abstract Acrylic on Linen Painting 46" x 30" inch by Hossam Dirar "Dancing with" (2016) by Hossam Dirar 46” x 30” Mixed media on linen canvas CHAOS This project i...

Lake Tarryall, a 1941 lithograph by Adolf Dehn (1895-1968) was made while he was teaching in Colorado. A native of Waterville, Minnesota, Dehn attended the Minneapolis School of Art ...

Title: Sunchasers Painting Animal Dog Modern Gold Contemporary Striking Invest Bold Classic Joy Original One-of-a-kind This painting forms part of an artwork series called BLUE. I ...

Lesley Anne Spowart, an abstract artist hailing from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is renowned for her transformative creations that blur the boundaries of mediums and styles. With a di...

Title: BLUE - Insightful Intent Painting Animal Dog Modern Gold Contemporary Striking Invest Bold Classic Joy Original One-of-a-kind This painting forms part of an artwork series c...

Lesley Anne Spowart, an abstract artist hailing from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is renowned for her transformative creations that blur the boundaries of mediums and styles. With a di...

Bibliothèque Sépia (Sepia Library) exemplifies Sophie Dumont’s celebrated series of abstract libraries — compositions that merge geometry, color, and reflection. In this piece, the a...

Original 1989 Louis Vuitton Automobile Classiques Poster –Hand Signed, Archival Linen-Backed. This poster was created for the Concours d’Elegance ...