Craig McPherson Art

Original Washington (D.C.) American Airlines mid-century vintage travel poster. Professional archival linen backed in very fine condition, ready to frame. Featuring one of the ...

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...

A play on words provides the title for this image -- a circle created out of the deconstructed parts of Singer IV This image is #37 from an edition of only 50, referenced as Firos 78...

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 "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 ...

This Holiday wreath adorns the door of a Brooklyn Mansion Frederick Mershimer (American, b. 1958) Moody, mysterious, majestic – these are some of the ways to describe the mezzotint...

Original Aspen Colorado town and mountain scene printed in 1975. Artist: Jim Ford. This poster is archivally linen-backed in excellent condition, Grade A, and ready to frame. No...

Vintage 1960s Chile Travel Poster – Mid-Century Modern Wall Art Print Showcasing Historic Architecture and a Fountain Scene. Archival linen backed and in Grade A condition, ready to frame. Transport yourself to the scenic beauty of Chile with this authentic 1960s travel poster...

Artist: Christo Title: The Umbrellas, Joint Project for Japan and the U.S.A. Medium: Offset lithograph in colors on wove paper Date: 1987 Edition: Unnumbered Sheet Size: 36 3/4" x 27...

Original Las Vegas, Nevada American Airlines travel poster. Archival linen backed in very good Condition Grade A-. The post...

Artist: Salvador Dali (Spanish surrealist, 1904-1989) Title: Planetary and Scatologic Vision Year: 1974 Medium: Engraving with embossing and color lithograph Edition: Numbered...

Ellison Hoover, 'Pulitzer Fountain, Evening', lithograph, circa 1940, edition c. 40. Signed in pencil. A fine, atmospheric impression, on cream wove paper; the full sheet with margins (1 1/2 to 4 5/16 inches), in excellent condition. Archivally matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size 12 1/2 x 9 5/8 inches (318 x 244 mm); sheet size 16 1/4 x 12 1/4 inches (413 x 311 mm). ABOUT THE SUBJECT The Pulitzer fountain was commissioned as a bequest by Joseph Pulitzer, newspaper publisher and founder of the Columbia School of Journalism. Designed by Austrian sculptor Karl Bitter...