Mikio Watanabe Art

Stone and Press Gallery is excited to offer several works in celebration of the LGBTQ community. Eclipse I is from an edition of 90 Mezzotint artist Mikio Watanabe was born in 19...

Stone and Press Gallery is excited to offer several works in celebration of the LGBTQ community. In this mezzotint, the sensual profile of a young nude woman is seen sleeping with ...

Alberto"El Cuervo" Bustillos (Mexico, 1950) 'Descubrir tus paisajes', 2007 etching, aquatint on paper Deponte 300 g. 12.3 x 10.3 in. (31 x 26 cm.) ID: CUR-108 Unframed

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...

Attr. to S. Dalì, "Aphrodite", Heliogravure and dry-point. Paris, Argillet. 1963-65. Image dimensions 49,2 x 39,7 cm. Beautiful Proof on vélin filigrané “Arches”, Signed and Dated...

Giovanni Domenico Campiglia, 'Bacchus Cumampelo', engraving, 1734, edition unknown. Signed 'Dom. Campiglia del.' in the plate, lower left. Engraving by Gabbugiani, after the original...

Erotic scene is an original Héliogravure artwork on ivory-colored paper, realized by Micheal Von Zichy in 1911. Printed in only 300 copies, Leipzig;...

The erotic scene is an original Héliogravure artwork on ivory-colored paper, realized by Micheal Von Zichy in 1911. Printed in only 300 copies, Leipzig; Privatdruck, from the Catalo...

Giovanni Domenico Campiglia, 'Dei Praestitis Signumexaere' (God's Providence Signumexaere), engraving, 1734, edition unknown. Signed 'Dom. Campiglia del.' in the plate, lower left. E...

MARTA WAKUŁA-MAC: Master of Arts in Fine Art Education- Diploma in Fine Art Printmaking at the Institute of Art, Pedagogical University, Krakow, 2003. Member of Graphic Studio Dubl...

Pencil signed, titled, and numbered 46/55 in the margin. Artist: Trevor Southey Title: "Shell Shedding" Medium: Drypoint Etching Edition: 46/55 Male nude against an abstract back...

Arthur B. Davies (1862-1928), Resurrection (aka Flying Figures; Border of the Lake), drypoint and aquatint on zinc, 1916, signed with the estate stamp lower right. Reference: Price 2...