Karl Wirsum Art

Leonard Merchant's mezzotint, "Snail in Cup" is inscribed for fellow artist, Fritz Eichenberg. While a student at the Central School for Arts and Crafts in London, a young Leonard Marchant found an engraving rocker in a cupboard and proceeded to turn himself into a master of the painstaking art of mezzotinting. Marchant, who has died in Shrewsbury aged 70, grew up in Simonstown, the Royal Navy's enclave in South Africa. Though his first job was as a parliamentary messenger, he taught himself to paint and, aged 19, was given a one-man show in Cape Town. Fired by this success, he left for England to study painting and, he claimed, to escape the stifling home atmosphere created by his Catholic mother and aunts. (His father was killed in the second world war.) Without contacts in London, he phoned Jacob Epstein, whose recommendation resulted in a grant to study briefly at the Central School. It was later, when studying full-time at the Central, that he saw the mezzotints of the Japanese master, Yozo Hamaguchi, in a London gallery. He was hooked. Creating a mezzotint is tedious in the extreme. The copper plate must first be prepared with a "rocker" which roughens the surface. A plate may be "rocked" 30 or 40 times. The rough texture is then reduced with a burnisher and a scraper, allowing the print a range of tones from velvety black through the greys to white. Marchant's plates could be months in the making. But the technical demands were the least of his worries. In its 18th- and 19th-century heyday, mezzotint was solely a reproductive medium, for copying masters such as Reynolds and Turner. The development of photography rendered it unfashionable, and by the 1960s the technique, known as la manière anglaise, was a bygone medium. Marchant, by now a teacher in printmaking at the Central, began to create original mezzotints with a colleague, Radavan Kraguly. A perfectionist, he seemed to revel in the straitjacket procedure. Perhaps it was the metaphor of bringing darkness out of light that appealed to this straight-talking, sometimes sombre, man, who would suddenly relax and light up like a gleaming hue on one of his prints. His work was of squares and triangles with the occasional cat, black and ominous, and carefully arranged still lifes, featuring plants, a seed pod, a pot he might have bought at auction to celebrate the sale of a print. There were one-man shows, notably at the Bankside Gallery. He sold well at the Royal Academy summer exhibition, was a Florence Biennale prizewinner, spent a fellowship year at the British School in Rome, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. But making mezzotints was not a paying job. Marchant and his South African wife...

"Mizuhiki" is an exclusive publication by Stone + Press in an edition of 100. Katsunori Hamanishi was born in 1949 on Hokkaido island - Japan's second largest island. In 1973 he fi...

James Seymour (1702-1752) A Standing Leap at a Gate Mezzotint with hand colouring Image size 10 x 14 in Framed size 16 1/2 x 20 in James Seymour was an English artist renowned for h...

Walasse Ting 丁雄泉 Green Cat, 1984 Color etching and aquatint on copper plate, printed on Fabriano Rosaspina paper Pencil signed, numbered 178/230, dated 1984 along with artist's perso...

Keith Haring Tony Shafrazi 1982: set of 6 printed works: A set of six, individual, double-sided lithographic inserts from the seminal, spiral bound 1982 Keith Haring Tony Shafrazi ca...

Garden Blackcap by Kate Heiss [2021] limited_edition Linocut Edition number 30 Image size: H:30 cm x W:30 cm Complete Size of Unframed Work: H:40 cm x W:40 cm x D:0.5cm Sold Unframe...

Artist: Mario Avati, French (1921 - 2009) Title: Elephant Equilibriste Year: 1969 Medium: Mezzotint, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 35/50 Image Size: 17.5 x 24 inches Size: 2...

Harry Bunce April, The Happy Year Limited Edition Print Edition of 365 (one for each day of the year) Size: H 31.5cm x W 28cm Artist signed/titled and numbered archival print on 300g...

Fernando Aceves Humana (Mexico, 1969) 'Lo que nos trajeron', 2007 mezzotint on paper 17.4 x 13.8 in. (44 x 35 cm.) Edition of 20 ID: ACE-101 Unframed

"The Meeting of Her Majesty's Stag Hounds on Ascot Heath" is a large colorful mezzotint engraving of an extensive British hunting scene. It was created by Sir Francis Grant...

"Final Spring" is an original color lithograph by Michael Knigin. The artist signed and titled in the lower center of image. This piece is an artist's proof and features a brightly c...

Edition 5 Portrait oof a black bull with Basquiat crown JAY-C – the pseudonym of this innovative young artist known for his subversive use of familiar figures and symbols. Using a d...