Jacques Barraband Art

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...

paper: 22 x 15 in. printed image: 4 3/4 x 6 in. english translation: Long Hand Crab Latin

Plate 13 from La Suite Vollard. Bloch 229. Baer 444. Etching on Montval paper. Signed in pencil, from the edition of 260 (there was also an edition of 50 with larger margins). Printe...

Etching, drypoint, and roulette on watermarked Hallines cream laid paper, 3 3/4 x 5 7/8 inches (95 x 148 mm), full margins. A very good impression of this charming image, with all of...

Screenprint and gold leaf on paper. Signed and titled in pencil. Numbered from the edition of 100. Image size: 220 x 220mm Paper size: 380 x 400mm Gold Leaf on Paper Edition of...

Screenprint on paper Signed and titled in pencil Numbered from the edition of 75 Image size: 505 x 505 mm Paper size: 665 x 685 mm Silkscreen print on Paper Edition of 100 50...

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

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...

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

Artist: François-Nicolas Martinet (French, 1731-1800) Title: "Canard de Miclon (Old Squaw)" (1008) Portfolio: Histoire Naturelle Des Oiseaux *Signed by Martinet in the plate (printed...

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. 26; Cocoa plant, caterpillar, pupa, and butterflies. The Netherlands: 1705. En...