etching

Jean-François Millet (1814-1875)

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Jean-François Millet The Diggers France, unknown date Etching Two men are digging in an inhospitable landscape. Their strong shoulders, curved backs and widely planted legs suggest the strenuous nature of their task. Millet often regarded peasant figures as evoking a sense of eternal and timeless toil in an unforgiving world. He un-idealised visions were seen … Read more

William Hogarth (1697-1764)

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William Hogarth Noon (second in sequence from ‘The Four Times of the Day’) London, 1738 Etching and engraving, black ink on paper Paper: 49 x 41 cm; mount: 80.8 x 60.5 cm  Dour-faced worshippers shuffle into the bright midday light from the Protestant French Huguenot church at St Giles’s-in-the-Field, London. Across the street, the rowdy … Read more

William Hogarth (1697-1764)

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William Hogarth Morning (first in the sequence from ‘The Four Times of the Day’) London, 1738 Etching and engraving, black ink on paper Paper: 48.8 x 39.7 cm; mount: 80.8 x 60.5 cm A wealthy spinster crosses Covent Garden Piazza on a freezing morning. The spinster’s attention is riveted on two embracing couples, causing her … Read more

William Hogarth (1697-1764)

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William Hogarth Evening (third in the sequence from ‘The Four Times of the Day’) London, 1738 Etching and engraving with red ink  Paper: 48.5 x 40.6; mount: 80.8 x 60.5 cm Clenched fists and furrowed brows indicate an oncoming tantrum as this brother and sister quarrel over a gingerbread man. The contrast between the children’s … Read more

William Hogarth (1697-1764)

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William Hogarth Night (from the sequence ‘The Four Times of the Day’) London, 1738 Etching and graving, black ink on paper Paper: 48.6 x 40.2 cm; mount: 80.8 x 40.2 cm Disorder and chaos rule in this side-street of taverns and brothels near Charing Cross. Children sleep under a table while a drunken Freemason is … Read more

Augustus John (1878-1961)

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Augustus John Nude Girl Standing London or Paris, about 1906 Etching 19 x 11.5 cm  A young naked woman stands with her knee upon a bed. Her pensive expression and downturned eyes suggest intimacy and naturalness. The loose, hastily etched lines highlight the mass and unevenness of her body rather than idealising her figure. The … Read more

Charles-François Daubigny (1817-1878)

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Charles-François Daubigny Apple Tree at Auvers (Pommiers à Auvers) Auvers, 1877 Etching on laid handmade paper, third state Plate: 18 x 27.5 cm; mount: 40.5 x 55.7 cm This print was made a year before Daubigny’s death in 1878. A peasant figure makes a path through the landscape equipped with tools for the cultivation of … Read more

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)

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James Abbott McNeill Whistler La vieille aux loques (The Old Rag-Picker) London, 1858  Etching 20.6 x 14.6 cm  An old woman sits in a doorway absorbed in sorting rags. Although the rag picker is shown as poor and frail, her focus and disengagement from the viewer creates a calm and contemplative image. The framing device … Read more

Eugen Napoleon Neureuther (1806-1882)

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Eugen Napoleon Neureuther The Morning after the Masked Ball Germany, 1840 Etching Plate: 21.5 x 29.1 cm  This Romantic etching is an intense depiction of hallucinatory artistic inspiration. According to Boetticher, this is the artist Theodor Emil Richter in a dream-like state in his studio. Purchased 2001 (No. 2001.5)

Johann Baptist Zwecker (1814-1876)

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Johann Baptist Zwecker Young Love Düsseldorf, 1840 Etching 24.1 x 28.7 cm  This Romantic etching is a highly atmospheric scene of love and death on a moonlit mountainside, taken from Heinrich Heine’s ‘Buch de Lieder’. ‘Love, O Love, it was your might, brought us to our sorry plight’. Their existence blighted by self-destructive love, ghostly … Read more

Agostino Carracci (1557-1602)

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Agostino Carracci Ecce Homo Bologna, 1587 Etching Paper: 45 x 34.4 cm; mount: 63 x 51.5 cm  Depicting a standard cycle of the Passion of Christ, the words ‘Ecce Homo’ (‘Behold the Man’) were used by Pontius Pilate to present Christ to the jeering crowds before his crucifixion. Mary swoons in the foreground, an unusual … Read more

Samuel Palmer (1805-1881)

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Samuel Palmer The Cypress Grove Redhill, Surrey, about 1880, completed 1883 Etching 13 x 19 cm  Set amid a mountainous nocturnal landscape, a group of nymphs mourn for the shepherd Daphnis who has been blinded by the nymph Nomia for being unfaithful. Loosely based on Virgil’s Eclogues (42-39 B.C.), this work may have been inspired … Read more

Jan Both (c. 1618-1652)

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Jan Both The Mule Driver Netherlands, 1630s Etching  22 x 29.5 cm The mule with a low-slung head struggling under the weight of a heavy load is a motif that frequently appears in Both’s Italianate landscape scenes. For many, the mule was an affordable means of transport and an ideal working animal, combining the endurance … Read more

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)

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James Abbott McNeill Whistler The Lime Burner London, 1859, published 1871 Etching with drypoint Plate: 25 x 18 cm; mount: 55.6 x 40.5 cm This is one of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames which Whistler completed by 1861. They resulted from a campaign of drawing along the river in which the artist sought … Read more

Arthur Illies (1870-1952)

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Arthur Illies Ripe Cornfield: Evening (Ahrenfeld am Abend) Hamburg, 1896 Colour etching on zinc 18.5 x 14.5 cm A fine impression on wove paper as issued in Pan in an edition of 1,600. This extraordinary colour etching is the product of deep biting a zinc plate and of one printing only. The colours are applied … Read more

Claude Lorrain (1604/5-1682)

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Claude Lorrain Sunrise Rome, 1634 Etching Paper: 12.9 x 20 cm; mount: 40.5 x 56 cm This marine scene bustles with activity as figures gesticulate, exchange glances and huddle in groups. The sun, which faintly be seen on the horizon, floods the picture with light and blurs the distant mountains. Opposite the triumphal Arch of … Read more

Antoon Derkzen van Angeren (1878-1961)

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Antoon Derkzen van Angeren Two Skulls Dutch, 1908-9 Etching 30 x 39.7 cm This etching revives the distinctive Dutch seventeenth-century painting category of vanitas still-life. One or more skulls in isolation was a tradition established by Angeren’s seventeenth-century predecessor, Hercules Seers (1589/90-1633/38). Purchased 2001 (No. 2001.1).

Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677)

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Wenceslaus Hollar Muscarum Scarabeorum Vermiumque Variae Figurae et Formae 1646 Etchings Wenclaus Hollar was born in Prague, but worked across Europe including in Stuttgart, Strasburg, Frankfurt and Cologne, where he became employed by Thomas Howard, the Earl of Arundel (1585-1646). Howard was a court member of King Charles I, and renowned for his collection of art and … Read more

Pierre Étienne Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867)

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Pierre Étienne Théodore Rousseau Oaks Among Boulders Barbizon, 1861 Etching Plate: 13.4 x 21 cm; paper: 30 x 40 cm; mount: 40.5 x 55.6 cm  This etching was made from Rousseau’s painting La Chene de Roches and published in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. Rousseau depicts the heart of the forest untouched by human intervention. Rousseau’s … Read more