Well, I certainly bought this book from just a glance at its cover! Apart from the striking image, of which more in a moment, the book ticks all my boxes for one I would like to have in my listings to sell to to my customers.
It is certainly a definitive reference for collectors of etchings, a largely British art form. Self-published by the leading expert in the field in 2001, this is a richly-illustrated history of the subject. You will recall from your school art lessons that etching is a printmaking process in which lines or areas are incised using acid into a metal plate in order to hold the ink. In etching, the plate can be made of iron, copper, or zinc. To prepare the plate for etching, it is first polished to remove all scratches and imperfections from the surface. (definition from the New York Museum of Art). The detail in this work is quite astonishing and, if I remember correctly it has to be etched as a mirror image of the required end product. Just like my potato prints used to be!
My newly-acquired copy is a like new paperback, with no discernible faults. Published by the author Elizabeth Harvey-Lee, 2001. The Seductive Art is a comprehensive reference and visual summary of British etching from 1850 to 1950, a golden era in British printmaking, the century which encompassed the etching revival, the etching boom and the etching crash. 385 artists are represented and over 800 etchings are illustrated and described. Most of the artists included have a separate, dictionary-like, entry with a small etched portrait or self-portrait where available, and at least one example of their work illustrated. A Preface describes the seductive appeal of the medium, the particularly British enthusiasm for it, the stylistic tendencies and character, and illustrates magnified details of the relevant etching techniques encountered in the catalogue descriptions – etching, drypoint with burr, mezzotint, line engraving, aquatint.
The image on the cover is from an etching by Gerald Leslie Brockhurst (1890-1978), a British portrait painter and master engraver based in Birmingham. Here’s another of his works, regarded as his masterpiece: Adolesence; the same model subject aged, err, sixteen at the time. He called her Dorette and she went on to become the second Mrs. Brockhurst after they fled to America in part because of the scandal their relationship provoked.
Adolesence,1932
“A technical tour de force… the composition focuses on her nude reflection in a mirror, a brilliant visual exercise in optical illusion. The delicate porcelain surfaces of the coffeepot, cup and saucer, and powder jar, the soft bristles of the hairbrush, the gleaming silver handle of the mirror, the wooden surface of the dressing table, and the glowing skin of the young woman form a network of interconnected tactile forms and planes. The hard cold glass surface of the mirror, however, dominates the image. Positioned between Dorette’s double portraits. it overlaps the velvety black contours of her reflected image, revealing Brockhurst’s skillful manipulation of a highly complex and nuanced set of relationships between tone and texture, light and dark.” (From The Eternal Masquerade published by the Georgia Museum of Art, where this 1932 etching resides. I remind you that was etched onto metal, in reverse, to provide a plate from which prints could be made.
Yours for £75 plus postage if you are quick!
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