Joseph Hecht 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...

Original gouache and watercolor on brown archival paper of a standing crow in profile. Signed and dated lower right. Condition is good to very good. Colors of the bird are strong a...

A pair of exquisite drawings by American Ashcan School artist Alexander Oscar Levy.

Etching on laid paper Signed in plate lower left: Jean François Raffaëlli. Published by Cadart & Luquet, Éditeurs, 79 Rue Richelieu, Paris With the blindstamp of the Société des Aqua...

Paul Jouve (after) - Antelope - Engraving 19 x 14 cm Editions Rombaldi, Paris, 1950. Copy on velin creme de Rives Copper engraving heightened with pochoir.

Heather Lancaster is a native of Atlanta, Georgia and hails from a family of artists. In fact, her mother is a painter, so she grew up immersed in the visual arts. Conversation at ho...

Carol Wax describes her circular images as "most often quasi abstract works that refer to ancient islamic designs using the shapes and attributes of animals, in this case the frog. T...

Description: This drawing is based on a scene from the 1950 Paramount Pictures film "Fancy Pants" starring Lucille Ball and Bob Hope. The original drawing is nicely framed and signe...

An exclusive publication for Stone and Press Gallery, "Snow Does" was created in an edition of 100. It is FIROS #66 in the catalogue raisonne. Carol Wax originally trained to be a classical musician at the Manhattan School of Music but fell in love with printmaking. Soon after she began engraving mezzotints she was asked by the renowned print dealer Sylvan Cole to exhibit at Associated American Artists Gallery, launching her career as a professional artist/printmaker. With the publication of her book, The Mezzotint: History and Technique, published by Abrams, 1990 and 1996, Carol added author and teacher to her credits. In the ensuing years she has expanded her repertoire of mediums beyond printmaking into other works on paper and painting. In compositions reflecting an appreciation for antiquated machinery and vintage textiles, Wax creates imagery that, in her own words, “… speaks to an inner life perceived in inanimate objects.” She uses stylization and imagination to reinvent subjects, transforming an ordinary typewriter into a monumental icon...

Joseph Piccillo No 11 (36.C), 2017 Medium: Graphite on Canvas Artwork Size: 60 x 48 x 1.125 in Throughout the second half of the 20th century, and for the first two decades of...

Hummingbird Augury (Circular Cobalt Blue Pastel Drawing of Golden Hummingbird and Stars on Indian Handmade Cotton Paper by Kahn & Selesnick) 11 inch diameter unframed pastel, conte c...

Paul Jouve (after) - Tiger - Engraving 19 x 14 cm Editions Rombaldi, Paris, 1950. Copy on velin creme de Rives Copper engraving heightened with pochoir.