Jacques Barraband Art

'Katzen' (Cats) German wood-engraving, circa 1895. 240mm by 155mm (sheet)

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...

Artist: François-Nicolas Martinet (French, 1731-1800) Title: "Sacelle male, de la cote de Coromandel" (Plate 949) Portfolio: Histoire Naturelle Des Oiseaux *Signed by Martinet in the...

Title: Rare Antique Hand-Colored Butterfly Engravings by Edward Donovan (1820s) – Set of Four Exquisite Natural History Prints This striking set of four antique butterfly prints rep...

Nicely framed featuring four different dog types.

"The Scar by China Miéville is a novel which has been a part of my life for many years, and has travelled as my companion through since adolescence. I've attempted to depict the Avan...

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...

'Einsiedlerkrebse' (Hermit crabs) German wood-engraving, circa 1895. 240mm by 155mm (sheet)

Artist: Saverio Manetti (Italian, 1723-1785) Title: "Eagle" (Plate V - 5) Portfolio: Storia Naturale Degli Uccelli (The Natural History of Birds) Year: 1767-1776 Medium: Original Hand-Colored Engraving on watermarked laid paper Limited edition: Unknown Printer: Unknown Publisher: heirs of Francesco Mouck (Vols. I-III), Gaetano Cambiagi (Vol. IV), Giuseppe Vanni (Vol. V), Florence, Italy Reference: Ayer/Zimmer page 241; Fine Bird Books page 120; McGill/Wood, page 450; Nissen IVB No. 588 Sheet size: 16.75" x 14.5" Platemark size: 13.63" x 10.88" Condition: Some minor surface marks mainly in margins. In excellent condition with strong colors Rare Notes: Provenance: private collection - Haarlem, Netherlands. Engraved and hand-colored by Italian artists Lorenzo Lorenzi (Active: 1750-1780) and Violante Vanni (1732-1776). Latin and Italian texts by Saverio Manetti. Comes from Manetti's monumental five volume "Storia Naturale Degli Uccelli (The Natural History of Birds)", (1767-1776), which consists of 600 hand-colored engravings. Unidentified watermark in very center of sheet. Comes with its accompanying information sheet. Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 60 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Manetti's extraordinary "Storia Naturale Degli Uccelli (The Natural History of Birds)", 1767-1776 was commissioned by Maria Luisa, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany. It is a massive 5 book volume set...

"Three Herons" - Hand Watercolor Engraving "Three Herons" from a collection of the Most Rare Birds Drawn and Engraved From Life, A Natural and Rational History of the Different Bird...

Kate Breakey's artistic process is an act of investigation – a passionate attempt to establish an understanding of the natural world – a version that incorporates both intellectual a...

Pair of hand colored botanical engravings of flowers.