Jean Cocteau Animal Prints

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...

Emidio di Nola, original Italian pasta poster. Size 19" x 25.5". Professional acid-free archival linen-backed; in excellent condition; ready to frame....

Keith Haring Into 84/Keith haring Painted Man 1983: Announcement card for Keith Haring’s well-documented exhibition, 'Into 84' at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York, 1983. For this ser...

Silkscreen work by Noche Crist (1909- 2004). Marked in pencil 3/15 lower left. Printed by the artist in the 1970s. Image is from her Year of the Ram series...

Artist: Henri Matisse (after) Title: Nu bleu, la grenouille (Blue Nude, The Frog) Portfolio: The Last Works of Henri Matisse Medium: Lithograph Date: 195...

Marc Chagall Original Lithograph Title: The Green Horse 1973 Dimensions: 33 x 50 cm Reference: This lithograph was created for the portfolio "Chagall Monu...

Marino Marini - Knight - Original Lithograph 1968 Dimensions: 32 x 48 cm From the art review XXe siècle Unsigned and unumbered as issued

Marino Marini - Horses - Original Lithograph 1951 Dimensions: 32 x 24 cm From the art review XXe siècle Unsigned and unumbered as issued

Original “Coppertone” Colore di Rame vintage Italian poster. Colore de Rame translates into the color of copper. Abbronzatevi! (suntan) Non bruciatevi! (don’t burn) Archival linen-backed in fine condition, ready to frame. This original Coppertone poster is in A condition. The background in the poster is a brighter yellow; after all, it is a sunny day, and you need suntan lotion! Coppertone is an American suntan cream. Interestingly, the American poster of this famous little girl and dog...

Lait Pur de la Vingeanne Stérilisé is an offset lithographic print reproduced after the original 1894-95 Belle Epoque advertising poster created by Théophile Steinlen, printed using 4-color offset lithography on heavyweight archival paper. Lait Pur de la Vingeanne Stérilisé depicts a seated rosy cheeked young girl (the artist's daughter) wearing a long red dress sipping milk from a bowl as a group of envious animal friends - 3 cats...

"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...

PEPPER JELLY LADY is a hand drawn, limited edition lithograph by one of the most important American artists of the 20th century, Romare Bearden whose...