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You are hereHarvey-LeeHomeHarvey-LeeMonthly Selection Harvey-LeeOld Masters Harvey-Lee Old Masters Archive 03

A Small Selection of Old Master Prints

LUCAS VAN LEYDEN, Leiden c1489? – 1533. St Jerome in a Landscape. Original engraving, 1513 KAREL VAN MALLERY, Antwerp c1571 - c1635. PEACE bringing Prosperity and Encouraging the Arts. This engraving after Maarten de Vos is for sale, priced £650 CLAUDE GELLEE, le LORRAIN, Chamagne, Duchy of Lorrain 1600 – 1682 Rome. Le Port de Mer au Fanal. This original etching c1638-41 is for sale priced £500
REMBRANDT van Rijn, Leyden 1606 – 1669 Amsterdam. Lieven Willemsz van Coppenol, Writing Master. This Original etching, c1658 is sold. GIOVANNI ANTONIO CANAL, called CANALETTO, Venice 1697 – 1768 Venice. La Libreria, V. This Original etching, c1740, is sold. JEAN FRANÇOIS JANINET, Paris 1752 – 1814 Paris. VENUS SUR LES AUX. This three-colour aquatint, c 1777, is for sale, priced £650

These links: Old Master Prints 01 and Old Master Prints 02, will allow you to view
the featured prints from earlier series of Old Master Prints

 


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The Current Selections:

From a Recent Catalogue
Modern British Prints
Modern Continental Prints
Prints by Women
Prints under £250

Selections from the Home Page

Click on a thumbnail (left) to link directly with the entry for that print, or scroll down to view all this month's selection. Images are not at very high resolution.

If you require further information on any print featured here, please contact us. When a print has been sold it will be marked as Sold.




LUCAS VAN LEYDEN, Leiden c1489? – 1533. St Jerome in a Landscape. Original engraving, 1513

LUCAS VAN LEYDEN
Leiden c1489? – 1533

Neither Lucas’ birth nor baptism are recorded, so that his date of birth is speculative. Even granted a precociously early mastery of engraving, 1489 would seem to be the earliest date admissible.

St Jerome (AD 342-420), one of the four Latin “Fathers of the Church”, translated the Bible into Latin. His version, the Vulgate, became the officially accepted text.
Jerome wrote an account of his four years’ penitence in the Syrian dessert, with ‘only the scorpions and wild beasts for company’, from which grew the popular legend of his pulling a thorn from the paw of a lion, who became his devoted friend.

St Jerome in a Landscape
New Hollstein 112
85 x 108 mm
Original engraving, 1513.
The plate signed with the initial L and dated.
A good silvery impression.
Trimmed to the plate, remains of tape at the edges verso.

Sold

With an unidentified collector’s stamp, monogram initials HR (Lugt 4050)

The saint studying Hebrew during his four hermit years.
The two most commonly represented attributes of St Jerome are the lion and a cardinal’s hat, both of which Lucas has included here. Historically the office of cardinal did not exist in Jerome’s day, but while in Rome the saint did hold a papal appointment.

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KAREL VAN MALLERY, Antwerp c1571 - c1635. PEACE bringing Prosperity and Encouraging the Arts. This engraving after Maarten de Vos is for sale, priced £650

KAREL VAN MALLERY
Antwerp c1571 - c1635

Van Mallery trained in the workshop of engraver and publisher Philips Galle in Antwerp from 1585 to c1595, in which year he left to go to Rome. On his return, in 1597, he became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke, and then married Catharina Galle, one of Philips Galle’s daughters. He is the subject of a van Dyck Iconographia plate.

The Flemish Mannerist painter and designer Maarten de Vos (1532-1603) spent eight years in Rome, 1550-1558, before returning to Antwerp, where he set up the Society of the Romanists, for artists and connoisseurs who appreciated Rome’s humanist culture. He was entered in the Antwerp Guild as a master in 1558.

After 1575 de Vos was mainly engaged in drawing designs for prints and was a fertile inventor of a prolific quantity of images which he supplied to a number of publishers.

PEACE bringing Prosperity
and Encouraging the Arts

Hollstein (de Vos) 1273 i/ii
178 x 232 mm
Engraving by Karel van Mallery after Maarten de Vos, c1599.
Plate 8, the final plate, of the cycle of the ‘Vicissitudes of Human Life’. First state of two, with the publisher’s address of Philips Galle.
A fine impression, in generally very good condition. A couple of small sanguine stains at the foot.

Sold

Peace not only holds a cornucopia of fruit, she presides over a ‘cornucopia’ of objects symbolising the many advantages that peace brings. Engraving tools, musical instruments, an artist’s palette (with de Vos’ ‘signature’), a mallet, mathematical and geographical aids, and architectural tools at the lower right, balance money bags, plate and jewellery at the left, while in the background a building is being constructed, actors are staging an entertainment and children play, amongst other activities.

The later decades of the 16th century saw war and destruction throughout northern Europe, in the battle between Catholicism and Protestantism. In the Low Countries this resulted in the separation of Catholic Flanders, still ruled by the Spanish Hapsburgs, from the seven northern Protestant Dutch provinces which declared independence under the House of Orange.

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CLAUDE GELLEE, le LORRAIN, Chamagne, Duchy of Lorrain 1600 – 1682 Rome. Le Port de Mer au Fanal. This original etching c1638-41 is for sale priced £500

CLAUDE GELLEE, le LORRAIN
Chamagne, Duchy of Lorrain 1600 – 1682
Rome

At the age of twelve Claude was taken into the household of the Roman painter Agostino Tasso as a pastry cook, but he became Tasso’s studio assistant. In 1625 he returned to Lorraine for a couple of years, where he worked with the court painter Claude Deruet.
It may have been contact with the etcher Jacques Callot, a friend of Deruet, that instigated Claude’s interest in etching, which he took up after he resettled in Rome in 1627.

Claude’s reputation as a landscape painter was established during the 1630’s, also the period when he was first active as an etcher. His etchings, like his paintings, are atmospheric, concerned with the tonal values of light, inspired by his love of the Roman Campagna and the coastline around the Gulf of Naples; poetic and classically harmonious in their composition.

An artist particularly admired in Britain, twenty-four of his twenty-seven etching plates were brought to England in the early 19th century.

Le Port de Mer au Fanal
Harbour with a Lighthouse
Mannocci 37 iv/v
142 x 200 mm
Original etching c1638-41.
The plate signed with the initials CL. With the plate number 7.
Penultimate state with the later additional numbering NN44 p8 in the lower plate border, added in the 18th century before 1754 (and subsequently removed by 1816).
A very good impression in this state.
On 18th century laid paper, without watermark. Trimmed to or just outside the platemark, small defects at the sheet corners.

£500

Closely related to a drawing, c1633-34, in Claude’s Liber Veritatis.

Mannocci suggests that in the late 1630’s Claude was planning the publication of a set of twelve landscape etchings, for which he added numbers in the left border to some of his existing plates and etched new plates which he gave a number immediately (as was the case with Le Port de Mer au Fanal, unknown in impressions prior to the number ‘7’).

He found the subjects for his new etchings among his earlier drawings in the Liber.

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REMBRANDT van Rijn, Leyden 1606 – 1669 Amsterdam. Lieven Willemsz van Coppenol, Writing Master. This Original etching, c1658 is sold.

REMBRANDT van Rijn
Leyden 1606 – 1669 Amsterdam

In its earlier states, before the plate was reduced in size, this was Rembrandt’s largest portrait etching. It is the second of two plates portraying the calligrapher Lieven van Coppenol, who is thought to have been dissatisfied with the first plate.

This second plate, based in reverse on a preliminary oil sketch (now in the Met. New York) was, before being cut down, almost the exact size of Rembrandt’s painting.

Lieven Willemsz van Coppenol, Writing Master
Bartsch 283; Hollstein 283 vi/vi; Usticke 283 ix/xi
158 x 133 mm
Original etching, c1658.
An 18th century impression on thin laid paper, after reduction of the plate. A new borderline introduced and the plate margins burnished clean.
A good clear impression, probably pre-Basan.
Thread margins all round, except at the top left where trimmed just outside of the image.
A short tear at the top supported verso by old tape, one tiny pinprick abrasion touched in, a small nick in the top plate margin.

Sold

Van Coppenol (c1599-c1677) began his career as the headmaster of the French School in Amsterdam but when illness caused his retirement he pursued his passion for calligraphy.

The British Museum has a first state impression personally annotated by van Coppenol in the lower sheet margin in ornate flowing script.

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GIOVANNI ANTONIO CANAL, called CANALETTO, Venice 1697 – 1768 Venice. La Libreria, V. This Original etching, c1740, is sold

GIOVANNI ANTONIO CANAL, called CANALETTO
Venice 1697 – 1768 Venice

La Libreria, V.Elizabeth Harvey-Lee The Marciana Library, Venice
Bromberg 18 iii/iii
145 x 212 mm
Original etching, c1740.
The plate signed.
Third (final) state, the title removed from the lower plate border.
A good impression on laid paper.
Thread margins or trimmed on the platemark.
A small ink spot in the left margin.

Sold

The state library, named for Venice’s patron saint, St Mark, was designed by Jacopo Sansovino. Construction began in 1537. Sited on the Piazzetta, next to the Bell Tower, the Renaissance library faces the Doges’ Gothic palace. Canaletto etched the scene in reverse so that when printed it is topographically correct. A puppet show is taking place near the waterfront.

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JEAN FRANÇOIS JANINET, Paris 1752 – 1814 Paris. VENUS SUR LES AUX. This three-colour aquatint, c 1777, is for sale, priced £650

JEAN FRANÇOIS JANINET
Paris 1752 – 1814 Paris

Janinet worked in Louis Marin Bonnet’s studio in 1771 and learnt the technique of colour printing from multiple superimposed stipple/crayon engraved plates, known as pastel engraving. On his own account Janinet developed an aquatint variation, though roughening the plate with a mattoir rather than chemically, which he called gravure à lavis, engraving in imitation of coloured wash.

He engraved several fine plates in this technique after the miniaturist Jacques Charlier (1706-1790, who may have studied with Boucher and produced similar erotic mythological scenes) while there was still a market for such Rococo frivolity, soon to be overtaken by the upright morality of the neo-classical and within a decade by the French Revolution.

From 1593 Charlier was styled painter and miniaturist to the King. Other patrons included Mme de Pompadour and various members of the French aristocracy, such as the duc de Caylus and duc d’Orleans.

VENUS SUR LES AUX (sic)Elizabeth Harvey-Lee Venus on the Waves
Portalis & Béraldi 17; Inventaire Fonds Français 242
133 x 134 mm (rectangular plate); 88 x 106 mm (oval image)
Three-colour aquatint, c 1777, after a miniature by Jaques Charlier.
Published and engraved by Janinet.
Printed in blue, pink and black on stout laid paper, trimmed in the margins.

Sold

Venus riding on a dolphin, one of her ‘attributes’, recalling her birth from the sea.

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