Richard Earlom, “Diana and Her Nymphs”, 1787, after Giovanni Battista Cipriani

Richard Earlom (aka [pseud.] Henry Birche) (1743–1822)

“Diana and Her Nymphs”, 1787, number 36 in a series of 50 etchings after drawings by Giovanni Battista Cipriani (aka Giuseppe Cipriani; John Baptist Cipriani) (1727–1785), “A Collection of Prints after the Sketches and Drawings of the late Celebrated Giovanni Battista Cipriani, Esqr R.A.” (see https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.43533.html), published in London by John Boydell (1719–1804) and his nephew, Josiah Boydell (1752–1817).

The portrayed scene shows Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt, standing at left holding her iconic bow and offering a rabbit to the closer of her four companion nymphs (see description of this print by the British Museum [inv. no. 1861,0518.369]).

Etching and aquatint on wove paper, trimmed around the image borderline with loss of publication details and backed with a support sheet.

Size: (sheet) 24.2 x 32.7 cm.

Wessely 485 (J E Wessely 1886 “Richard Earlom, Verzeichniss seiner Radirungen und Schabkunstblätter”, Hamburg, cat. no. 485).

Condition: a strong impression trimmed around the image borderline and laid upon a support of archival (millennium quality) washi paper providing wide margins. The sheet is in an excellent condition with no tears, holes, folds or significant stains.

I am selling this seemingly loosely inscribed etching following a drawing by Giovanni Battista Cipriani—a founding member of the Royal Academy—for the total cost of AU$289 (currently/approximately US$191.44/EUR176.83/GBP147.63 at the time of this listing) including Express Mail (EMS) postage and handling to anywhere in the world, but not (of course) any import duties/taxes imposed by some countries. Note that payment is in Australian dollars (AU$289) as this is my currency.

If you are interested in purchasing this freely drawn composition revealing not only a haptic leaning to drawing (viz. drawing as if describing a form by the sense of touch rather than describing its superficial details) but also a deep knowledge of anatomy—note how the lines follow the course of muscles rather than defining a silhouette outline of the portrayed subjects—please contact me (oz_jim@printsandprinciples.com) and I will send you a PayPal invoice to make the payment easy.

This print has been sold

Boëtius Adamsz. Bolswert's etching, “Landscape with Rocks and River”, 1614,

Boëtius Adamsz. Bolswert (aka Boëtius Adamsz. Bolswerd) (1580–1633)

“Landscape with Rocks and River” (Landschap met Rotsen en Rivier), 1614, after the design by Abraham Bloemaert (aka Abraham Bloemaart) (1564–1651), plate 20 from the series of 20 prints, “Landscapes with Farmhouses” (aka “Landscapes with Farms”; “Landschappen met boerderijen”).

Etching on laid paper trimmed close to the platemark and backed with a support sheet. (Note that the British Museum advises that the print is an engraving but I agree with the Rijksmuseum that it is an etching.)

Size: (sheet) 15.8 x 24.9 cm; (plate) 15.7 x 24.7 cm; (image borderline) 15.3 x 24.4 cm.

Numbered on plate within the image borderline at lower left of centre: ”20”.

Roethlisberger 1993 249 (Marcel G Roethlisberger 1993, “Abraham Bloemaert and his sons: Paintings and prints”, 2 vols, Doornspijk, Davaco, pp. 196–198, cat. no. 249); Hollstein 357 (F W H Hollstein 1950, “Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts ca. 1450-1700: Boekhorst–Brueghel”, vol. 3. Amsterdam, Menno Hertzberger, p. 67, cat. no. 357).

The British Museum offers the following description of this print:

“Plate 20: Mountain landscape with two figures on a large rock at centre, a cascade at centre, two other figures standing on a rock in distance; after Abraham Bloemaert.”

(https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=3058341&partId=1&searchText=Bolswert+Bloemaert&page=1)

See also the description of this print at the Rijksmuseum:

http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.collect.84318

Condition: crisp and well-printed early impression (based on the lines showing no sign of wear to the printing plate), trimmed along the platemark and laid upon an archival support sheet of millennium quality washi paper. There are restored losses to the tips of the upper left and lower right corners, otherwise the sheet is in excellent condition (i.e. there are no tears, holes, folds, abrasions, significant stains or foxing).

I am selling this amazing landscape rendered in curved lines as if drawn by sense of touch rather than eye, for a total cost of AU$300 (currently US$214.41/EUR190.22/GBP164.09 at the time of this listing) including postage and handling to anywhere in the world (but not, of course, any import duties/taxes imposed by some countries).

If you are interested in purchasing this perfect example of a haptic experience of landscape, please contact me (oz_jim@printsandprinciples.com) and I will send you a PayPal invoice to make the payment easy.

This print has been sold

Haptic & Visual: Rodin & Julien

What are the key approaches to drawing?

Without too many apologies for speaking broadly, I wish to propose that there are only two fundamental approaches to drawing: the haptic and the visual. The haptic approach involves an artist drawing the chosen subject as if “feeling” its contours and spatial volume in a sensory way. For instance, if the subject were a chair, the artist would seemingly—perhaps literally—stroke the drawing support with the pen or pencil as if stroking the chair’s contours until an image of the chair became apparent. This attitude of discovering form by sensory exploration is expressed well by Michelangelo’s often quoted assertion:” I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free” (arguably from a letter from Michelangelo to Benedetto Varchi). By contrast, the visual approach is a much more analytical and calculated process of representing a subject using pictorial conventions, sight-size measuring and applying the most appropriate marks to mimic the subject’s pictorial attributes. For instance, in using this approach the artist would draw the chair by using the rules of perspective and employ marks to replicate the textures and patterns of light and shade on the chair.  To illustrate the difference of these two approaches and the advantages of each, the following discussion will focus on the way that Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) employs the haptic approach in portraiture by comparison to the visual approach of Bernard-Romain Julien (1802–71).

Like most sculptors engaged with working in a three-dimensional medium such as clay, plaster and bronze, Rodin’s practice as a draughtsman is to use each line as if it were floating in space. Moreover, the placement of each line in this illusion of space is so clear its position with regard to the other lines in a drawing can be determined with a fair degree of certainty. In his portrait of Victor Hugo (shown below) for example the lines portraying the great writer’s beard (see the detail further below) are arranged so that the hairs closest to us are minimally longer and have more graphic energy (i.e. expressive “life”) than the lines describing the further away aspects of his beard. From a personal standpoint, these lines are more than descriptive marks representing the beard. They embody the material substance of the beard as a three-dimensional mass leading back to his face in a flurry of rhythms like water making its way through rapids. 

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917)

Victor Hugo, de Trois Quarts (Victor Hugo, Three-Quarters View), 1885

Drypoint on creme wove paper

state vi (of viii)

22.2 x 14.9 cm (plate); 29.8 x 21.8 cm (sheet)

Thorson: VIII

Condition: pristine condition.

I am selling this print for the total amount of $970 AUD including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. Please contact me using the email link at the top of the page if you are interested or click the “Buy Now” button below.

This print has been sold

View of whole sheet

Rodin, (detail) Victor Hugo, Three-Quarters View, 1885

Rodin’s treatment of the silhouette outline of Hugo’s forehead reveals a key element of the haptic approach: a subject’s form is constructed out of the contours of the subject’s features rather than through observed effects of light and shade on the features. For example, the bump on Hugo’s noble brow (see detail below) is not delineated as a simple convexity in an unbroken silhouette outline. Instead the bump is portrayed as a conceptually “felt” excrescency and, as a consequence, the line work contouring the bump is then fitted into the matrix of other “felt” contours that ultimately shape the silhouette outline of Hugo’s head. In short, the outline is constructed from the head’s internal features rather than an observed line of demarcation between the subject and the immediate background.

Rodin, (detail) Victor Hugo, Three-Quarters View, 1885

One outcome of working with the haptic approach is that a drawing of a subject executed this way must ultimately be a personal and subjective portrayal. Of course, this is not usually a problem as part of the mantra of most artists is to showcase a personal vision. When a personal perception is not required, as for example in presenting an objective viewpoint for technical illustration, the visual approach of presenting a subject from the standpoint of what can be observed becomes important. The teaching of drawing and illustration is built around this approach as it gives opportunity for all the drawing techniques and principles gathered through the centuries to be channelled into a best practice model for portraying a subject. One of the instrumental artists engaged in this academic pursuit during the nineteenth century is Bernard-Romain Julien.

Julien’s approach to drawing is easily seen in his exercise templates for students to copy. In the selection of lithographs shown below the fine art academy student is invited to use the initial outline of the figure on the left of each plate and to follow the tonal distribution of the figure fully rendered in tone on the right. During the nineteenth century, instructional plates like these were widely available and they helped to train the student’s eye to see clearly and to instil care in the modelling of a subject’s form using very controlled shading techniques.

 Bernard-Romain Julien (1802–71)

Cours Elementaire, Plate Number 42

Lithograph on wove paper

27.5 x 36 cm

Cours Elementaire, Plate Number 44

Lithograph on wove paper

27.5 x 35.5 cm

Cours Elementaire, Plate Number 74

Lithograph on wove paper

27 x 36 cm

Cours Elementaire, Plate Number 79

Lithograph on wove paper

27.5 x 35.5 cm

Condition: minor handling marks and age toning to edges.

These prints have been sold

In the two prints below Julien’s deep admiration of a classical past is very evident. Not only is the choice of a subject designed to appeal to a taste at that time for notions of beauty aligned to the antique but the style of rendering is also designed to impart cool objectivity despite the use of dramatic lighting and the vignette format.

Bernard-Romain Julien (1802–71)

Cours Elementaire, Plate Number 138

Lithograph on wove paper

36 x 27.5 cm

Cours Elementaire, Plate Number 56

Lithograph on wove paper

35.9 x 27.4 cm

Condition: minor handling marks and age toning to edges.

I am selling the above two lithographs (#138, 56) for the total amount of $130 AUD including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. Please contact me using the email link at the top of the page if you are interested or click the “Buy Now” button below.

These prints have been sold

Julien’s infinite care in rendering the transitions of tone on a subject also extends to how he models the contours of each form with line. In Etude d’apres E. Deveria (shown below), for instance, the cross-hatching of lines is so consciously controlled that the precision of alignment within each set of lines makes the form of the subject a clear representation of concrete reality.

Bernard-Romain Julien (1802–71)

Etude d’apres E. Deveria, Cours Elementaire, Plate Number 104

Lithograph on wove paper

37 x 27.4 cm

Condition: minor handling marks and age toning to edges.

I am selling the above lithograph (#104) for the total amount of $95 AUD including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. Please contact me using the email link at the top of the page if you are interested or click the “Buy Now” button below.

This print has been sold

On close comparison with the line work of Rodin, however, there is a difference in the handling of contours. In Julien’s print the line work can be described as an approximation of a broad flow of the subject’s contours but this flow is one based on observation rather than sensory exploration. Herein is the essential difference in the two approaches.

Julien, (detail) Etude d’apres E. Deveria

Julien, (detail) Etude d’apres E. Deveria

Graphic & Pictorial Space: Haden & Brangwyn

How do artists create meaningful images when one component of their brain is analytical and the other is intuitive?

In an earlier post focused on Daniel Heimlich, I proposed that his arrangement of subject material matches the constructs of the Foote, Cone and Belding Grid in engaging the viewer’s left and right brains' functions. For the present discussion I will move the focus away from the concept that the analytic and intuitive leanings of our divided brain prefer certain arrangements of imagery and focus on how these two propensities of the brain impact on the way that artists’ make images. More specifically, I wish to discuss how Sir Francis Seymour Haden (1818–1910) and Sir Frank Brangwyn (1867–1956) present their very different ways of looking at subjects into coherent images.

Before exploring these artists’ approaches I must clarify that the following explanation is based solely on what can be seen in the prints examined rather than being based on privileged knowledge about these artists’ motivations and intentions when they made the images.

At first glance, Haden's etching, Thames Ditton—with a Sail (shown below) may appear to be an easily understood image. Essentially, the immediate foreground shows the broken remains of a tree trunk. The left silhouette edge of this tree creates an arching rhythm leading to a sail strung loose on a mast with water behind it stretching back to a cluster of houses in the distance. On a closer inspection, however, this initial reading of the scene is not so straight forward. The foreground tree is not an objective representation of what Haden would have seen (see detail further below). For instance, the treatment of its upper region is far from being an accurate description of bark and twigs. But this does not mean that the drawing of the tree is inappropriate. It is a wonderful tree. From my standpoint the treatment of its representation with a web of seemingly searching marks expresses clearly Haden’s emotional response to the non-visible spirit of the tree. Just as important, this very subjective rendering of the tree juxtaposed beside the mimetic treatment of the rest of the image projects a mood of unease arising from the note of discord the contrast between the two drawing styles creates.

(Sir) Francis Seymour Haden (aka Dean, H [used for RA exhibitions]) (1818–1910)

“Thames Ditton—with a Sail” (aka ”Le Village de Thames Ditton”), 1864

Etching with drypoint on fine cream laid paper with wide margins.

Size: (sheet) 26.8 x 36.1 cm (plate); 14 x 20.6 cm; (image borderline) 12.7 x 20.5 cm

State viii (of viii) with the “bare strip 10mm. across the bottom of the plate” and the inscription from the previous state with the address of Cadart & Luquet removed.

Schneiderman (Seymour Haden) 68.VIII (Richard S Schneiderman 1983, “A catalogue raisonné of the prints of Sir Francis Seymour Haden”, Robin Garton, London, p. 171, cat.no. 68.VIII); Harrington 73 (Samuel Henry Nazeby Harrington 1910, “The engraved work of Francis Seymour Haden, an illustrated and descriptive catalog”, p. 36, cat.no. 73)

The Rijksmuseum offers the following description of this print from the same state (viii) as this impression:

“The village of Thames Ditton on a river. In the foreground two old trees and a man in a sailing ship.”

(http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.collect.42501)

See also the description of the print by the British Museum:

http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=1564366&partId=1&searchText=ditton&page=1

Condition: crisp, impression with a bare upper left corner—perhaps resulting from the plate having been inadvertently held before it was printed. The sheet is in near pristine condition (i.e. there are no tears, holes, folds, abrasions, stains or foxing but there is lightening of tone around the impression).

I am selling this exceptionally fine impression in faultless condition for the total cost of AU$430 (currently US$324.65/EUR270.86/GBP238.76) including postage and handling to anywhere in the world.

If you are interested in purchasing this remarkable print by Haden with a simply incredible drawing of a tree that goes far beyond a pictorial description of it and from my viewpoint expresses Haden’s intimately personal exploration of what the tree means to him, please contact me (oz_jim@printsandprinciples.com) and I will send you a PayPal invoice to make the payment easy.

(Detail) Thames Ditton—with a Sail, 1884

(Detail) Thames Ditton—with a Sail, 1884

(Detail) Thames Ditton—with a Sail, 1884

What Haden exemplifies in this print are two essential ways of drawing. One way is by visual representation of superficial appearance arising from the left brain processes, as exemplified in the mimetic rendering of the landscape beyond the foreground tree. This approach also involves the mechanics of drawing (e.g. perspective, sight-size measuring, construction of shadows. reflections and all the other subtleties of portraying form) in a very conscious and disciplined way. In short, this approach is to create what may be described as “pictorial space”—a space of three-dimensional illusions. The other way is by analogue representation of essentially non-visual experiences arising from right brain processes, as exemplified in the web of gestural marks describing the foreground tree. This is a more intuitive approach wherein artists configure their gut feelings about a subject into marks, shapes and rhythms onto the drawing support. This concept of intuitively sensing the subject and configuring the drawing to match the experience may be described as “graphic space”—a space of synthesised ideas and non-visual feelings.  

These two spaces—pictorial and graphic—are equally evident in Brangwyn’s remarkable etching, Le Pont Valentre, A Cahors (shown below). Here Brangwyn’s analytical eye defines his vision of the bridge and reflection with finely hatched strokes rendering the tones in pictorial space while his intuitive eye describes in a layering of richly inked lines his experience of a tree on the right in graphic space. What I find fascinating with this print is how literally the two spaces are so unapologetically abutted. From my standpoint, Brangwyn is making a forceful statement with this print that the world of concrete mortar and bricks is also inhabited with the shadowy world of a brooding mood.

Sir Frank Brangwyn (1867–1956)

Le Pont Valentre, A Cahors, 1912

from Revue de L’Art Ancien et Moderne

Etching in sepia ink on cream wove paper,

printed by Chardon Wittman with original tissue guard

18 x 24 cm (plate); 22.6 x 30.9 cm (sheet)

Condition: beautiful impression in pristine condition.

I am selling this print for $310 AUD including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. Please contact me using the email link at the top of the page if you are interested or click the “Buy Now” button.

(Detail) Le Pont Valentre, A Cahors, 1912

(Detail) Le Pont Valentre, A Cahors, 1912

 

Although the above discussion focuses on how Haden and Brangwyn integrated their divided ways of looking into a singular vision, for the viewer of their images the point needs to be made that composition also plays a significant role in how meaning is communicated. Again, like Daniel Heimlich’s arrangement of subject matter, these two artists’ disposition of pictorial and graphic space aligns well with the constructs of the Foote, Cone and Belding Grid: pictorial space is shown on the left and graphic space is shown on the right.