Yozo Hamaguchi Art

Jack Vettriano (1951-) is renowned for his film noir oil paintings and 1930s glam style. Uniquely Vettriano, ‘Young Hearts’ is set by the seaside inviting narratives about the figures in his work: relationships, anticipation, power and suggestion. Vettriano grew up by the Fife Scottish coast. He began painting beach scenes as a young adult, later developing his particular recognizable style and thematic imagery. His work was embraced by celebrities such as Madonna and Jack Nicholson and he has become hugely successful. His most famous painting, ‘The Singing Butler...

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...

Yoshitomo Nara Tomorrow's Far Away Offset lithograph on paper Sheet size: 51.5 x 36.4 cm Stamped with title, artist's name, copyright and year published by N's Yard, Japan

A wonderful selection of hand-coloured mezzotint engravings from: ""Phytanthoza Iconographia"", c1739, presented in hand- made parcel-gilt, ebonised and decalcomania frames. Joha...

This colored botanical mezzotint and line engraving finished with hand coloring by Johann Wilhelm Weinmann (1683-1741) is entitled "A. Ephemerum Virginianu flore Purpureo, B. Ephemer...

This Finnish artist creates a mezzotint in black and white. This impression is #44 of 100 and is signed, dated and titled in pencil. Jukka Vanttinen (Finn, b. 1954) Jukka Vanttinen...

Published by the Royal Academy

2012 Offset lithograph in colours on wove paper 80 x 60 cm Signed in black in by Tracey Emin Published by Turner Contemporary Accompanied by a gallery Certificate of Authenticity Tr...

Original linen-backed LUFTHANSA: Your lift to the Alps vintage ski poster. Excellent condition original German ski poster. The image has two women with skis resting on their sho...

Artist: Yue Minjun Title: Untitled (Smile-ism No. 20) Year: 2006 Medium: Lithograph on Rives BFK paper Edition: 45; signed and numbered in pencil Sheet: 43.50 x 35.25 in. (110.5 x 8...

A wonderful selection of hand-coloured mezzotint engravings from: ""Phytanthoza Iconographia"", c1739, presented in hand- made parcel-gilt, ebonised and decalcomania frames. Joha...

Unframed. Edition of 250 ex. Free shipment worldwide. Reality or fantasy? What is the difference between fantasy and fact, between night and day, between torment and transports of d...