Charles Francois Daubigny “Pladge de Villerville” Etching Charles Daubigny As famous for his original etchings as for his paintings, Charles Daubigny  More »

Charles Francois Daubigny “Pladge de Villerville” Etching Charles Daubigny As famous for his original etchings as for his paintings, Charles Daubigny holds a prime position in mid nineteenth century French art. A leading artist of the great Barbizon landscape school, Charles Francois Daubigny directly influenced the following generation of Impressionist painters. At the age of nineteen Charles Daubigny began formal art studies in the Paris studio of Paul Delaroche. His first exhibited works of art were shown at the Paris Salon in 1838 and during the following decades he obtained numerous medals and awards for both his etchings and paintings. Charles Francois Daubigny regarded etching as a vital force in his art. Between 1838 and the year of his death he created more than one hundred and fifty works of art in the graphic mediums -- far more than his fellow Barbizon artists, Millet and Corot. Mainly self-taught as an etcher, Charles Daubigny’s graphic art has been actively collected for over one hundred and fifty years. The Gazette des Beaux-Arts: The revival of etching as a prominent form of art first took place in France in the mid nineteenth century. Sparked by the Paris etchings of Charles Meryon and by the Barbizon landscape etchings of Charles Daubigny, Millet, Corot and Jacque, French artists elevated etching to a creative process of art as vital as painting or sculpture. Such an outburst of artistic energy in this field had not been seen since the days of Rembrandt and other seventeenth century Dutch master etchers. At the vanguard of this wave was the Paris based Gazette des Beaux Arts. Beginning with its initial publication in 1859, the Gazette regularly commissioned the greatest etchers of the day to supply original graphic art for publication. Nineteenth century editions included original etchings by Charles Francois Daubigny, Goya, Meryon, Whistler, Seymour Haden, Max Liebermann, Albert Besnard and others. Thus some of the greatest etchings of the nineteenth century originated from this publisher. Charles Francois Daubigny “Plage de Villerville” Etching. Published by The Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Paris on Laid paper, measuring 5 by 8 inches (plate mark) with nice margins.   « Less

Eugene Delacroix "Waterloo" Original Etching Here we are offering a very fine and rare etched image of Eugene Delacroix "Waterloo" Original Etching AFTER his work in  More »

Eugene Delacroix "Waterloo" Original Etching Here we are offering a very fine and rare etched image of Eugene Delacroix "Waterloo" Original Etching AFTER his work in oil, and etched by A. P. Martial, a practice totally accepted by Delacriox and other artists of the period for work in oils to be etched by well respected engravers working with the artist. The lovely etching and drypouint was Published in Gazete des Beaux Arts, printed by A Carbart, of Paris. The etched work measure 6 by 8 inches (Plate mark) and in good condition on Laid paper, inscribed as shown. Among the subjects painted by Delacroix for the Chapelle des Saints-Anges (the Chapel of the Guardian Angels) at the church of Saint Sulpice in Paris, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel is without doubt one of his most powerful compositions. The scheme for the chapel murals - also including Heliodorus Driven from the Temple, and St Michael Defeating the Devil - presents three Biblical scenes featuring angels as warrior-like messengers of the redeeming power of God. At first glance, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (as related in Genesis: 32) celebrates the beauty of Nature, with its huge trees and twisted trunks. But its chief subject remains the strange pair of wrestlers, their struggle a symbol of Man’s spiritual quest, during which Jacob is injured but not defeated. In this late work, finished in 1861, Delacroix embarks on his own, ultimate aesthetic quest. Delacroix received the commission to decorate a chapel in the church of Saint Sulpice in Paris by decree of the Préfecture de Seine, on April 28, 1848, issued by the Fine Arts division and its director, Antoine Varcolliers. Unexpectedly, he changed the original theme to the Guardian Angels, noting in his diary that the decision was taken "on their very Feast Day," October 2, 1849. Interrupted by other more urgent projects - notably the central section of the ceiling in the Apollo Gallery at the Louvre (1850-51), the paintings for Paris City Hall (1852-54) and the great retrospective of his work for the Universal Exhibition of 1855 - and further complicated by the technical difficulty of the work, the decorations for the chapel (the first on the right entering through the West door) were finally inaugurated on July 31, 1861, two years before the artist’s death.   « Less

Alphonse Legros (May 8,1837 — December 8, 1911), painter, etcher and sculptor was born in Dijon. His father was an accountant, and came from the neighbouring village  More »

Alphonse Legros (May 8,1837 — December 8, 1911), painter, etcher and sculptor was born in Dijon. His father was an accountant, and came from the neighbouring village of Véronnes. Young Legros frequently visited the farms of his relatives, and the peasants and landscapes of that part of France are the subjects of many of his pictures and etchings. He was sent to the art school at Dijon with a view to qualifying for a trade, and was apprenticed to Maître Nicolardo, house decorator and painter of images. In 1851 Legros left for Paris to take another situation; but passing through Lyon he worked for six months as journeyman wall-painter under the decorator Beuchot, who was painting the chapel of Cardinal Bonald in the cathedral. In Paris he studied with Cambon, scene-painter and decorator of theatres, an experience which developed a breadth of touch such as Stallfield and Cox picked up in similar circumstances. At this time he attended the drawing-school of Lecoq de Boisbaudran (the “Petite école”) where he found himself in sympathy with Jules Dalou and Auguste Rodin. In 1855 Legros attended the evening classes of the École des Beaux Arts, and perhaps gained there his love of drawing from the antique, some of the results of which may be seen in the Print Room of the British Museum. Experiments in all varieties of art work were practiced; whenever the professor saw a fine example in the museum, or when a process interested him in a workshop, he never rested until he had mastered the technique and his students were trying their apprentice hands at it. As he had casually picked up the art of etching by watching a comrade in Paris working at a commercial engraving, so he began the making of medals after a walk in the British Museum, studying the masterpieces of Pisanello, and a visit to the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris. Legros, considered the traditional journey to Italy a very important part of artistic training, and in order that his students should have the benefit of such study he devoted a part of his salary to augment the income available for a travelling studentship. His later works, after he resigned his professorship in 1892, were more in the free and ardent manner of his early days—imaginative landscapes, castles inSpain, and farms in Burgundy, etchings like the series of “The Triumph of Death,” and the sculptured fountains for the gardens of the duke of Portland at Welbeck. Here is a great work: Alphonse Legros “Edward J. Poynter” Etching, measuring 6.25 by 10 inches (platemark); plate signed on laid paper. This is in good condition with little discoloration out side of the etched work and a slight crease in the paper out side of the etched work (of little notice).   « Less

Rare Braquemond “Chemin de Halage Au Bas Meudon” on Japon paper Felix Bracquemond’s great influence upon contemporary etching cannot be appreciated  More »

Rare Braquemond “Chemin de Halage Au Bas Meudon” on Japon paper Felix Bracquemond’s great influence upon contemporary etching cannot be appreciated without a close study of his reproductive work. Here the virtuoso appears in all his brilliance… The secret of Felix Bracquemond’s technique is its diversity. He never kept to a fixed rule. Starting from the selection of the most suitable paper and not afraid of changing his medium till he came to the finishing stroke, he never failed to produce the exact shade of effect he desired. Famous both for his etchings after his designs and the designs of his contemporaries, Felix Bracquemond was a major artist of the nineteenth century etching revival in France. Apprenticed to a lithographer at the age of fifteen, he was largely self-taught in the art of etching and produced his first prints in this medium at the age of nineteen. As a young man he befriended such artist-etchers as Manet and Legros as well as such authors as Gautier and the Goncourts. In 1863, at the age of thirty, Felix Bracquemond was awarded the French Legion of Honour for his contribution to the art of etching. Here is a rare impression of Rare Bracquemond “Chemin de Halage Au Bas Meudon” on japon paper. Published by Les Chefs d oeuvre and printed by Chardon Wittmann, Paris. The work is inscribed in the plate BRAQUEMOND del. et. sculp. The image measures 10 by 7.75 inches. Printed on japon paper and attached to a nice quality wove paper with good margins. This is in good condition.   « Less

George Morland “First Pledge of Love” Engraving George Morland (1763—1804) was an English painter of animals and rustic scenes Morland was born in  More »

George Morland “First Pledge of Love” Engraving George Morland (1763—1804) was an English painter of animals and rustic scenes Morland was born in London on 26 June 1763. His mother was a Frenchwoman, who possessed a small independent property of her own. His grandfather, George H. Morland, was a subject painter. Henry Robert Morland (c. 1719 — 1797), father of George, was also an artist and engraver, and picture restorer, at one time a rich man, but later in reduced circumstances. His pictures of Jaundry-maids, reproduced in mezzotint and representing ladies of some importance, were very popular in their time. The finest of Morland’s pictures were executed between 1790 and 1794, and amongst them his picture of the inside of a stable, in Tate Britain, London, may be reckoned as a masterpiece. His works deal with scenes in rustic and homely life, depicted with purity and simplicity, and show much direct and instinctive feeling for nature. His coloring is mellow, rich in tone, and vibrant in quality, but, with all their charm, his works reveal often signs of the haste with which they were painted and the carelessness with which they were drawn. He had a supreme power of observation and great executive skill, and he was able to select the vital constituents of a scene and depict even the least interesting of subjects with artistic grace and brilliant representation. His pictures are never crowded; the figures in them remarkably well composed, often so cleverly grouped as to conceal any inaccuracies of drawing, and to produce the effect of a very successful composition. As a painter of English scenes he takes the very highest position, and his work is marked by a spirit and a dash, always combined with broad, harmonious coloring. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy from 1784 down to 1804, but few of his academy pictures can be identified owing to the inadequate description of them afforded by their titles. George Morland “First Pledge of Love” Engraving, conceived by Morland and engraved by William Ward, noted engraver of the period on antique paper, measuring 8.75 by 10 inches with margins (uneven). In good condition with lovely coloring.   « Less

Marc Chagall “Vitebsk” Limited Edition Lithograph Marc Chagall (July 7, 1887 — March 28, 1985), was a Belarusian Jewish artist associated with several  More »

Marc Chagall “Vitebsk” Limited Edition Lithograph Marc Chagall (July 7, 1887 — March 28, 1985), was a Belarusian Jewish artist associated with several key art movements and was one of the most successful artists of the twentieth century. He forged a unique career in virtually every artistic medium, including paintings, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramics, tapestries and fine art prints. Chagall’s haunting, exuberant, and poetic images have enjoyed universal appeal, and art critic Robert Hughes called him “the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century.” As a pioneer of modernism and one of the greatest figurative artists of the twentieth century, Marc Chagall achieved fame and fortune, and over the course of a long career created some of the best-known and most-loved paintings of our time. According to art historian Michael J. Lewis, Chagall was considered to be “the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists.” For decades he “had also been respected as the world’s preeminent Jewish artist.” He also accepted many non-Jewish commissions, including a stained glass for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, a Dag Hammarskjold memorial at the United Nations, and the great ceiling mural in the Paris Opera. His most vital work was made on the eve of World War I, when he traveled between St. Petersburg, Paris, and Berlin. During this period he created his own mixture and style of modern art based on his visions of Eastern European Jewish folk culture. He spent his wartime years in Russia, and the October Revolution of 1917 brought Chagall both opportunity and peril. He was by now one of the Soviet Union’s most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avante-garde. He founded the Vitebsk Arts College, which was considered the most distinguished school of art in the Soviet Union. However, “Chagall was considered a non-person by the Soviets because he was Jewish and a painter whose work did not celebrate the heroics of the Soviet people.” As a result, he soon moved to Paris with his wife, never to return. He was known to have two basic reputations, writes Lewis — as a pioneer of modernism, and as a major Jewish artist. He experienced modernism’s golden age in Paris, where “he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism.” Yet throughout these phases of his style “he remained most emphatically a Jewish artist, whose work was one long dreamy reverie of life in his native village of Vitebsk.” “When Matisse dies,” Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, “Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is.” Marc Chagall “Vitebsk” Limited Edition Lithograph and measure 11.50 by 14 inches (sheet size), in good condition. This is numbered 563 of an edition of 2400 and with a embossed Signature, this is in good condition.   « Less

Lyman Byxbe was born near Pittsfield, Illinois on February 28, 1886. Though he had no formal school training, he was artistically inclined from a young age, and as an adult  More »

Lyman Byxbe was born near Pittsfield, Illinois on February 28, 1886. Though he had no formal school training, he was artistically inclined from a young age, and as an adult learned the art of etching from Omaha architect Mark Levings. He worked primarily in drypoint, aquatint, and etching, but also executed works in mezzotint, conté crayon, oil, pencil, and watercolor. Byxbe and his wife began traveling in 1922 to Estes Park, Colorado, as summer visitors. By 1930 he had set up a studio and soon had a booming business, which included etchings of resident’s cabins for Christmas cards. By the mid-thirties he was garnering national attention. He was elected to the Chicago Society of Etchers, and had a one man show of sixty-some items at the Smithsonian in 1937-38. Byxbe moved to Estes Park for good shortly thereafter. He had a shop on Elkhorn Avenue in downtown Estes Park for many years. Byxbe died in Estes Park on March, 27, 1980. Here we have Lyman Byxbe “Bear Lake” Etching, pencil signed and measures 7 by 5.5 inches in good condition.   « Less

Francisco Goya “Le Descanona” Limited Edition Etching-Aquatint Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (March 30, 1746 — April 16, 1828) was an  More »

Francisco Goya “Le Descanona” Limited Edition Etching-Aquatint Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (March 30, 1746 — April 16, 1828) was an Aragonese Spanish painter and printmaker. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown and a chronicler of history. He has been regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and as the first of the moderns. The subversive and subjective element in his art, as well as his bold handling of paint, provided a model for the work of later generations of artists, notably Manet and Picasso. The engraved images that make up Goya’s most important series of prints, Los Caprichos (1799), have long been recognized as one of the supreme monuments of European art. Goya, royal painter to the kings of Spain during the late eighteenth-early nineteenth centuries, eventually died in exile, both of his major print series having been “donated” to the crown to protect him from the Inquisition. A believer in the potential power of reason, his works show what happens when reason is trampled underfoot by individual human follies and corrupt social customs. In these works Goya looks at his country and memorializes it as a monument to desperation, folly, arrogance, incompetence, and the need that some of his subjects have to try to control the uncontrollable. Los Caprichos are a set of 80 aquatint prints created by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya in 1797 and 1798, and published as an album in 1799. The prints were an artistic experiment: a medium for Goya’s condemnation of the universal follies and foolishness in the Spanish society in which he lived. The criticisms are far-ranging and acidic; he speaks against the predominance of superstition, the ignorance and inabilities of the various members of the ruling class, pedagogical short-comings, marital mistakes, and the decline of rationality. Some of the prints have anticlerical themes. Goya described the series as depicting “the innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society, and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance, or self-interest have made usual”. The work was an enlightened, tour-de-force critique of 18th-century Spain, and humanity in general. The informal style, as well as the depiction of contemporary society found in Caprichos, makes them – and Goya himself – a precursor to the modernist movement almost a century later. The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters in particular has attained an iconic status. Goya added brief explanations of each image to a manuscript now in the Prado; these help greatly to explain his often cryptic intentions, as do the titles printed below each image. Goya’s series, and the last group of prints in his series The Disasters of War, which he called “caprichos enfáticos” (“emphatic caprices”) are far from the spirit of light-hearted fantasy the term caprice usually suggests in art. Los Caprichos were withdrawn from public sale very shortly after their release in 1799. In 1803 Goya offered the Caprichos’ copper plates and the first edition’s unsold sets to King Carlos IV. Later in life Goya wrote that he had felt it prudent to withdraw the prints from circulation due to the Inquisition. Here we are offering fine quality Etching-Aquatint of “Les Caprices” produced in a small Limited Edition of 412 sets, printed on quality paper and executed with the supervision of de La Bibliotheque Nationale, Madrid on “Arches” watermarked Laid paper. Each Engraved work measure 5.5 by 7.5 inches, plus lettering. Sheet measures 13 by 9 inches in great condition. See enclosed image of the colophon. Platemark measures 8.50 by 5.75 inches. The colophon is not included with the purchase but can be down loaded for your records.   « Less

Adrian van Ostade “Peasant on the Tramp” Etching Adriaen van Ostade (bapt. Adriaen Hendricx December 10, 1610 — bur. May 2, 1685) was a Dutch genre  More »

Adrian van Ostade “Peasant on the Tramp” Etching Adriaen van Ostade (bapt. Adriaen Hendricx December 10, 1610 — bur. May 2, 1685) was a Dutch genre painter and a gifted etcher-print-maker. He was the eldest son of Jan Hendricx Ostade, a weaver from the town of Ostade near Eindhoven. Although Adriaen and his brother Isaack were born in Haarlem, they adopted the name “van Ostade” as painters. According to Jacobus Houbraken, he was taught from 1627 by Frans Hals, at that time the master of Adriaen Brouwer and Jan Miense Molenaer. At twenty-six he joined a company of the civic guard at Haarlem, and at twenty-eight he married. His wife died in 1640, and he speedily re-married. He again became a widower in 1666. In 1662 he took the highest honors of his profession with the presidency of the painters Guild of St. Luke in Haarlem. Among the treasures of the Louvre is a striking picture of a father sitting in state, his wife at his side, surrounded by his son, five daughters, and a young married couple in a handsomely furnished room. By an old tradition, Ostade here painted himself and his children in holiday attire; but the style is much too refined for the painter of boors, and Ostade had but one daughter. Here we have Adrian van Ostade “Peasant on the Tramp” Etching, final state on early wove paper. Plate measures 2 by 3 inches approximate with margins and in good condition. Plate is unsigned.   « Less

Hans Sebald Beham “The Standard Bearer” Etching Hans Sebald Beham (1500 — 1550) was a German printmaker who did his best work as an engraver, and was  More »

Hans Sebald Beham “The Standard Bearer” Etching Hans Sebald Beham (1500 — 1550) was a German printmaker who did his best work as an engraver, and was also a designer of woodcuts and a painter and miniaturist. He is one of the most important of the “Little Masters”, the group of German artists making old master prints in the generation after Dürer. The older brother of Barthel Beham by two years, he was born into a family of artists in Nuremberg. In 1525, along with his brother and Georg Pencz, the so-called “godless painters”, he was banished from Nuremberg, accused of heresy (against Lutheranism), blasphemy and not recognising the authority of the City council. Within months the three were allowed to return to the city, but Beham was exiled again in 1528 for publishing a book on the proportions of the horse regarded as plagiarised from an unpublished manuscript by Albrecht Dürer, who had recently died. After a period spent working in various German cities, from 1532 he lived mostly in Frankfurt until his death in 1550. He is increasingly known just as “Sebald Beham”, as this how he usually signed his name in full. The “Hans” seems to derive from the first letter of his monogram only. However, up to about 1532 his prints were monogrammed ‘HSP’, reflecting the Nuremberg pronunciation of his name: Peham. After this date, when he had moved to Frankfurt, his monogram became ‘HSB’ often but NOT always engraved in his works. Here we have Hans Sebald Beham Engraving one of several, all signed with the artist monogram HB and measures by inches sheet of TRIMMED on the Borderline so there is NO plate mark on laid paper. We estimate this was printed in the late 18th century. Otherwise in good condition. The work measures 2 by 3 ¼ inches.   « Less