Katsunori Hamanishi Animal Prints

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...

After Maurits Cornelis Escher (Dutch, 1898–1972) Sky and Water II Printed vinyl A 1960s copy of the 1938 original 21 x 17 in. (53.5 x 43 cm.) t...

Toco Toucan Toucano (2020) Edition of 150 Nine colour lithographic print on Somerset Velvet 300 gsm. Signed, numbered, and dated by the artist Katherine Bernhardt is a contemporar...

Come Here and I'll show you something beautiful is a limited edition drypoint etching finished with oil pastel by artist and printmaker, Kate Boxer. The work is soft purple pastel c...

Contemporary colorful silkscreen by Louisiana born artist George Rodrigue. The work features Rodrigue's iconic blue dog character dressed in a yellow bandana and a cowboy hat set aga...

Peter Beard The End of the Game (Hand Signed by Peter Beard), 1977 Offset Lithograph Poster (hand signed by Peter Beard and inscribed with a heart) Han...

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...

"NEW INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORDER" is a brightly colored serigraph by the American artist/sculptor Chaim Gross printed in 16 colors including shades of yellow, blue, purple, salmon p...

David Shrigley I’ve Heard About Freedom, 2021 Digital print 70 x 50 cm Framed 78 x 68 cm Unsigned Edition of 250 Published by Shrig Shop. David Shrigley is a British artist known ...

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...

Edition of 300. Murakami signed and numbered in silver marker pen along the lower right edge. Offset lithograph with cold foil stamp and high gloss varnishing on UV paper. 70 x 52.8 ...

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