Karl Wirsum Prints and Multiples

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...

The etching "The Game of Transformation. Butterflies" is an artist's play with meanings and associations. In this work, modern girls are presented in the form of glamorous fluttering...

Walasse Ting 丁雄泉 Green Cat, 1984 Color etching and aquatint on copper plate, printed on Fabriano Rosaspina paper Pencil signed, numbered 178/230, dated 1984 along with artist's perso...

Celebrating human's best friend with this unique and beautiful series by Mauro Oliveira. All the colors of the rainbow and in between represent the happiness and unconditional love ...

A late 1960's modern Pop Art etching of horses by Marc Foster Grant (American, b.1947). The galloping horse motif is repeated, in the style of Warhol...

This artwork titled "Rabbit Series #2" 1980, is an original mezzotint with embossing by noted Hungarian artist Radovan Kragulj, b.1935. It is hand signed, dated, titled and numbered 7/50 in pencil by the artist. The sheet size is 25.5 x 19.5 inches is in excellent condition. About the artist: Radovan Kraguly...

Hugues Merle was a French painter who mostly depicted sentimental or moral subjects. Samuel Cousins was a highly regarded mezzotint engraver. 350mm by 2...

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...

"And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was a plucked off olive leaf: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth." Mario Avati, a master ...

Lois Ward created a Fragile Series of images including "Crushed Beetle" in 1990 in a very small edition of just 9. This impression is #1 of 9. Ward has always been concerned with t...

**FINAL MONTH OF THE ANNUAL 90 DAYS SALE FOR INVENTORY RENEWAL** **PRICED EXTRA LOW TO BE SOLD BY MARCH 31ST ONLY - TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT** Remember Cecil, the old lion killed in Afr...

Remember Cecil, the old lion killed in Africa by an American tourist a few years ago. Oliveira features the famous and beloved creature in this series. Limited edition of 30 museum...