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The Feminine Touch
A Selection of Prints currently in stock by Women Artists

These links: Women Artists 1, Women Artists 2 and Women Artists 3 will allow you to view featured prints from previous three series of Prints by Women Artists

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JESSICA LANDSEER
London 1807 or 1810 – 1880 Folkstone

Typically of earlier women printmakers, Jessica was the daughter of an engraver, John Landseer A.R.A. Most of her brothers and sisters became artists too; most famously Edwin Landseer.

Jessica painted oils of landscapes and animals, as well as portrait miniatures. She made at least two etchings, both after drawings by her brother, the future Sir, Edwin.

She exhibited at the Royal Academy, the British Institution and the Society of Women Artists. Jessica never married and in later years, when his health failed, became the devoted companion and housekeeper to Sir Edwin Landseer.

Vixen
54 x 82 mm
Etching, after Edwin Landseer.
With a pencil signature.
A good impression in good condition.
On laid india paper.
A little soiled in the margins.

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Jessica’s pet terrier dog, having just despatched a rat.

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MARIE STEIN
Oldenberg 1873 – 1969 Heidelberg

Women not being admitted to the Academies in Germany until 1919, Marie Stein trained with the Dusseldorf painter Walter Petersen 1890-1893. It was he who taught her to etch. Subsequently she spent a year at a women’s school of art in Munich, run by Friedrich Fuhr, before working in the studio of Paul Naumen.

In 1896 she spent some time in Paris.

Marie Stein became one of the few women members of the Deutschen Künstlerbund (German Artists Association) in 1906, two years after it had been founded as the first German national artists’ association.

In 1906 too Marie married the eminent Egyptologist Hermann Ranke, who would be a member of the expedition to Egypt in Winter 1912/13 which discovered the bust of Queen Nefertiti. Thereafter she signed herself Marie Stein-Ranke. They had three children, who sadly all pre-deceased their parents.

Head of a young Woman
289 x 193 mm (plate); 238 x 168 mm (etched image)
Original etching, with mezzotint rockerwork, c1903-4.
The plate signed with the artist’s monogram.
Issued in Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, 1905.
Printed on chine appliqué.
With the usual Zeitschrift single line of text at the foot of the sheet.
Good condition.

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Marie Stein was awarded 3rd prize for this etching in the 1904 annual competition arranged by the Leipzig art journal. Members of the jury included Max Klinger and Max Liebermann.

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BERTHA EVELYN JAQUES (née Clausen)
Covington, U.S.A. 1863 – 1941

The wife of a Chicago surgeon, it was on a visit to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair that Bertha Jaques was inspired to take up etching. She was overwhelmed by her discovery of the medium in the Fair’s exhibition of new French etchings and immediately set about acquiring the materials to try etching herself, though without any particular previous artistic training other than as an amateur painter. After much experimentation she bought her own press in 1894. Her husband not only helped her initially make some of her tools from his surgical implements but hired domestic help, so she could concentrate on her art.

To promote interest in etching, with other Chicago etchers, she formed the Needle Club in 1909 and the following year was instrumental in founding the Chicago Society of Etchers.

The Society held annual exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago and attracted an international membership. In 1923 Bertha Jaques was the first artist to have a solo exhibition of etchings at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.

Waiting for the Tide – Chioggia – Italy
239 x 151 mm
Original etching, c1914.
Signed in pencil.
On cream laid paper.

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LOUISA EMILY THOMSON
called Louis Thomson
Kandy, Ceylon 1883 – 1962

A watercolour painter, etcher and lithographer, Louis Thomson studied in Rome and London. She was a member of the Senefelder Club in London and of the International Society of California Printmakers. She exhibited widely, at the Royal Academy, with the Society of Women Artists, and abroad.

Piazza del Popolo, Rome
178 x 127 mm
Original etching, c1910.
Signed in pencil, entitled and inscribed “no.15”.
On japan.

£75

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Sister MARGARET TOURNOUR
Sutton, Surrey 1921 – 2003 Roehampton

The earliest women printmakers were nuns, who in the late 14th and early 15th century, made small religious woodcuts to sell to pilgrims. It is fascinating to find a nun continuing that tradition in the modern age, though in wood engraving rather than woodcut, and not of religious subjects, though not without spiritual significance.

Margaret Tournour won a scholarship to Croyden School of Art in 1938. Shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War she left the college.

After the War, while nursing her elderly mother, she did some illustrative work for Oxford University Press, for children’s books and nature books, as well as scraper boards to be used for Bible booklets. She had already made some watercolours and started to engrave on wood by 1952, when she took the decision to enter the teaching order of the Society of the Sacred Heart. She took her final vows in Rome in 1960.

Teaching would occupy all her time, until her retirement in 1984, when she joined a community of twelve nuns in Blyth in Northumberland and had the opportunity and time to take up wood engraving again. In the ensuing decade or so, although confined to a wheelchair, she produced about five hundred wood engravings. Almost all were subjects from the natural world. She had great pleasure in observing animals and birds, particularly those she could watch in a convent garden. She had a particular love of cats, which extended beyond the domestic breeds to the big wild cats.

With the exception of a few blocks professionally printed for two slim private press volumes, none of her blocks were editioned. She hand-printed proofs herself , using the pressure from the back of a spoon, producing delicate silvery images.

Leopard
101 x 125 mm
Original wood engraving, 1995.
An artist’s proof on tissue-thin japan paper.
Signed with the monogram in pencil, dated and entitled.

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