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The Home Page Selection

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ETIENNE DELAUNE
Milan? c1518 – 1583 Paris

A goldsmith, designer and engraver, Delaune is recorded as a journeyman goldsmith in 1546. In 1552 he was appointed to the newly established Royal Mint. Though replaced within six months, he continued to work for the king, Henri II (died 1559), as a designer of armour and decorative metalwork.

Delaune took up printmaking about 1557 (his earliest dated work is 1561) and became the most accomplished engraver in France, working generally on a small scale.

A Protestant, the Massacre of St Bartholomew in 1572 forced him to flee, initially to Strasbourg and four years later to Augsburg, then back to Strasbourg in 1580. Shortly before his death he returned to Paris.

Seconde Suite des Mois de l’Année
Second series of the Months of the Year
Robert-Dumesnil 185-196
55 x 78 mm
The set of twelve, 1568.
Oval subjects on rectangular plates.
Each ‘entitled’ with the specific month, and with the royal privilege, at the foot of the plate.
All signed, in Latin, (except for July), generally with the initials SF (Stephanus fecit) within the subject (May and June have Stephanus F). January is also dated.
A matched set, trimmed to the plates.

£1850

Delightful miniature depictions of seasonal activities; each month with the appropriate sign of the zodiac included at the top of the subject.

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JOHN SELL COTMAN
Norwich 1782 -1842 London

It was in the ambience of the Norwich Society of Artists that Cotman took up etching in 1810, using both the soft ground and hard ground processes. Hard ground he used for all his antiquarian architectural series and soft ground for the smaller scale painterly romantic studies.

In 1817 Cotman visited Normandy with Dawson Turner, making drawings of buildings, and went there again in 1818 and 1820. Two years later he published a set of 100 etchings based on sketches he made there, with text by Dawson Turner.

Entrance to the Castle at Tancarville
Architectural Antiquities of Normandy Pl.86; Popham 283
285 x 226 mm
Original etching, 1822.
As published in the first edition of Architectural Antiquities of Normandy.
On chine appliqué on wove paper.

£120

The Chateau of Tancarville was built in the 11th century, overlooking the Seine.

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THEOPHILE ALEXANDRE STEINLEN
Lausanne 1859 – 1923 Paris

Steinlen settled in Paris about 1880.

He loved cats and appropriately contributed illustrations to the in-house magazine of the cabaret Le Chat Noir. Steinlen sheltered strays, so that his house in Montmartre was known locally as “Cats’ Corner”. He drew and painted them; modelled them in clay; lithographed them; and from 1898, when he took up the technique, etched them.

Petit Chat
De Crauzat 27i/iii
100 x 165 mm
Original etching, with drypoint and rocker work, 1898.
First state of three, before the etched dedication to Eugène Delâtre and signature in the plate.
Uunsigned proof.
One of only 2 or 3 proofs.
Printed in brown-black on cream laid paper.

£2000

Steinlen’s first etching. The dedication, added to the plate in the second state, thanked Delâtre for his advice and for the kindness of his little cat. A l’ami Eug. Delâtre ce premier cuivre – résultat de ses bons conseils et de la gentillesse de son petit chat – est dédié. Juin 1898.

In the third state Steinlen would add a colour plate.

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ALFRED RICHARD BLUNDELL
Bury St Edmunds 1883 – 1968 West Suffolk Hospital

Blundell was only six years old when he discovered “the magic of drawing”. He attended Bury Art School in the evenings on a scholarship, 1898-90, while employed as an auctioneer’s clerk and for the next two decades he worked as a railway clerk for the Great Eastern Railway.

In 1912 he decided to become an artist and the following year went to London, studying at the Slade for six months, and returned to Suffolk in 1915, where he would remain for the rest of his life. Though he spent three months in the army in 1915, he was discharged because of physical disability.

He had probably begun etching at the Slade in 1913 and exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time in 1918. Many of his etchings are Suffolk scenes, but he also travelled. From 1923 he held annual exhibitions of etchings and mezzotints in Bury, and also exhibited country wide.

After marrying in 1933, he also took on a teaching post. Though he painted too, Blundell’s reputation rests mainly on his etchings.

The Cathedral of S. James,
& the Norman Tower, Bury St Edmunds
388 x 225 mm
Original etching, 1925.
Signed in pencil and entitled.
Edition 50-100
(as cited in Fine Prints of the Year, 1925).
On cream wove.
Tiny pale stain in the sky, and small paper defect.
Time-stained verso in the margins.
Together with the etched copper plate.

£500

Click this image to view an enlargement of the plate

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In the style of FRANK DUVENECK
A bravura late 19th century etching in the style of Frank Duveneck, or one of his ‘boys’

Frank Duveneck (1848-1919) was born in Covington, Kentucky to German parents. He trained and subsequently taught at the Munich Academy, where about half of his students were also Americans, and came to be called ‘the Duveneck boys’.

In 1879-81 Duveneck and a group of his Boys, including Otto Bacher (1856-1919) and Charles Abel Corwin (1857-1938) travelled to Florence and Venice. In Venice in 1880 they met Whistler, there for the Fine Art Society commission of a series of etchings of Venice.

(A Venetian side Canal)
291 x 475 mm
Original etching, c1880, unsigned.
On stout wove paper, a few unobtrusive tiny wormholes and one small printing failure.

Sold

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