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DOROTHEA MAETZEL-JOHANNSEN
Lensahn 1886 – 1930 Hamburg
Dorothea Johannsen initially trained as an art teacher,
as women were not, at that date, admitted to the Hamburg Art School.
She met her husband, Emil Maetzel in 1908. He was an architect,
painter, sculptor and graphic artist, nine years her senior, who from 1907
to 1933 was head of Hamburg’s Urban Development Department,
and organised exhibitions and festivals; an important figure on the
Hamburg art scene. They married in 1910 and had four children,
born 1911-1917. In 1915, on visits to Berlin, where her husband was
stationed, Dorothea Maetzel-Johannsen took lessons from Lovis Corinth,
whose work, since he had had a stroke, had become much more Expressionst
than Impressionist.
Until the 1920’s her work was primarily graphic, influenced by Die Brücke Expressionism and African tribal art, which Erik Maetzel collected.
In 1919 she would co-found the Hamburg Secession.
She died relatively young, having had rheumatic arthritis with related heart
problems from childhood.
Lovers by a Lake, and a figure beyond
402 x 452 mm
Original linocut.
Signed in pencil and numbered 1.
On fibrous japan nacrée.
Probably an edition of about 5.
Sold
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CLARE LEIGHTON
London 1898 – 1989 Woodbury, Connecticut
The most impressive and beautiful of the ‘autobiographical’
books Clare Leighton wrote, illustrated and designed, including
even the end papers and dustjacket, is The Farmer’s Year, 1933. (The illustrations in the book itself are printed from electrotypes
rather than from her hand engraved wood blocks).
During the 1930’s, until the end of the decade when, with impending
war and the end of her relationship with Noel Brailsford, she emigrated
permanently to the U.S., Clare Leighton was living in the Chilterns.
The original wood blocks for The Farmer’s Year, similarly to Stanley
Anderson’s contemporary line engravings of country crafts, generally
celebrate the landscape, seasonal activities and individuals of the Chilterns.
But the accompanying text to the month of September describes
apple picking in Kent, and that for October, cider making in Devon.
Apple Picking
Boston 209
220 x 280 mm
Original wood engraving, from the artist’s proof 1933 English edition of 30
(the total edition was 60 - there being also an American edition of XXX).
Signed in pencil, numbered 19/30 and entitled.
On japan.
Sold
Clare Leighton describes September as
“the month of ripeness –
a golden, crimson and russet month” and as shown in her engraving,
observes how at midday, when the sun is high “each tree courteously
spreads a circular dark green carpet of shade beneath itself.
They stretch, these circles of shadow, back into the shapelessness of
distance, narrowing into ellipses as they go”.
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IVY ANNE ELLIS
Lee Bank, Birmingham 22 April 1897 – February 1984, Chipping Campden
An illustrator and a wood engraver trained at the Birmingham
School of Art, Anne Ellis exhibited with the Royal Society of Artists,
Birmingham from 1920 until the outbreak of the Second World War.
She was closely associated throughout this period with the older
Birmingham artist Bernard Sleigh, with whom she collaborated on a
number of works.
For her own woodcuts she concentrated on images mainly of wild flowers.
On Sleigh’s retirement in 1937, they moved to Chipping Campden,
where they were involved with the Guild of Handicraft.
Primroses
122 x 163 mm
Original colour wood engraving.
The block monogrammed.
Signed in pencil and numbered 13/100.
On japan.
The top margin
narrower at the right.
Sold
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CRISPIN DE PASSE the Elder
Arnemuiden 1589 – 1637 Utrecht
After his move to Cologne for religious reasons de Passe set up
as an independent engraver and publisher. As they grew up,
his three sons and daughter all joined him and were trained in the
family business, before moving to other parts of Europe,
including briefly England, developing an international business.
Amongst his output of decorative cycles was a series of ‘portraits’
of each of The Nine Muses, the goddesses of creative inspiration in
poetry, song and other arts, which de Passe published about 1600.
Several of them show the principal female figure in a classical
landscape playing or accompanied by musical instruments,
as in that offered here. Obviously why this print was chosen as a
gift for a musician, the conductor Sir Colin Davis.
In the context of a catalogue of prints relating to the five senses
it is an interesting aside to note that such circular compositions in series
were used in the early 17th century in England, particularly in the case
of Crispin de Passe’s cycle of roundels of The Twelve Months, either in
imported impressions from his own original plates or in re-engraved
copies, to ornament the backs of thin round wooden dessert trenchers.
The prints were trimmed, stuck down and varnished to protect them.
When a household was entertaining, the cheese course was served on the
obverse. The cheese consumed, the trenchers were turned over and
admired and the verses around the outer edges studied for amusement
or enlightenment, rather in the manner of mottos in today’s Christmas
crackers, or fortune cookies, after a festive meal.
Terpsichore – Muse of choral Song and Dance
Hollstein 407
127 mm diameter
Engraving, c1600.
Numbered 5 of the series of nine Muses.
The plate signed with de Passe’s name and ‘address’.
A fine impression, trimmed inside the plate, close to a borderline
and laid down.
Sold
Ex collection Sir Colin Davis (A gift to him from the Orchestra of
the Von Müller Gymnasium, Regensburg, 1989)
Terpsichore plays the cittern and has a harp and lute beside her.
In the distant landscape Orpheus, the legendary Thracian poet,
famed for his musical skill, charms the animals (including a unicorn,
elephant, ostrich and deer) with his lyre playing.
The surrounding ‘motto’ concludes with the power of music to engender love.
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JEAN LOUIS FORAIN
Rheims 1852 – 1931 Paris
Forain took up lithography in 1892. His early lithographs were printed
by the firm of Belfort, though later he printed his stones himself.
Rue Laffitte
Guérin 6; IFF 102
284 x 219 mm
Original lithograph, 1892.
The stone signed and entitled.
Signed in pencil and numbered 14 from the edition of 50.
Printed by Belfort & Cie and with their blindstamp (Lugt 225d).
On cream laid paper with narrow margins.
A couple of small marginal defects.
£2000
The picture dealer Salvador Mayer looking at an Impressionist painting
in a gallery in the rue Laffitte, in Paris.
Ambroise Vollard, in his autobiography Recollections of a Picture Dealer,
describes the Rue Lafitte, location of many Parisian commercial galleries,
as “la rue des tableaux” (The Street of pictures ).
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