Muirhead Bone (1876-1953), Rainy Night in Rome, drypoint, 1913,signed in pencil lower right and inscribed “Trial Proof” lower left margin.  Reference: Dodgson 299, first state (of 10), a total of 125 impressions were printed in all 10 states.  In very good condition, with margins, 12 x 8 7/8 inches, the sheet 15 3/4 x 11 inches.

A fine rich impression, with substantial burr and carefully wiped plate tone lightening the center of the composition, printed on a cream wove paper. A trial proof aside from the 48 impressions in this state.

As described by Dodgson, the ground at the bottom right is blank to a height of 10 mm in this state, but the foreground of the composition is in fact darkened with plate tone.

Rainy Night in Rome is one of Bone’s great iconic images.  It shows the church San Girolamo degli Schiavoni (not the Church of St. Rocco, as mentioned by Dodgson), at an angle of the Via Schiavoria and the Via di Ripetta.

Detail

Muirhead Bone (1876-1953), On the Stocks, lithograph, 1917, signed in pencil lower right [also signed in the stone], in very good condition (remains of hinging verso), printed on a handmade cream wove paper, 13 7/8 x 18, the sheet 15 1/4 x 21.

Provenance: Kennedy Galleries, New York, with their mat and annotations.

A very good impression.

Bone started his printmaking career in lithography, eventually achieving renown as a leader of the British Etching movement through his work in etching and drypoint.  On the Stocks suggests that lithography, rather than drypoint,  would seem to be just the right medium to capture the rough grit and smoke of shipbuilding, and the mammoth size of the effort – but Bone created most such compositions in drypoint.

In On the Stocks a large merchant ship is being built under a shed to shelter a hive of workmen beneath the weather.  The many little railways seen in the foreground bring the material from the shops to the stocks.  This is one of a group of lithographs of the Western Front (a reproduction of which is included in a book called the Western Front, Doubleday, New York, 1917,  with drawings by Bone, documenting the World War I effort); it was also included (as number 2)  in a set of 6 lithographs entitled Building Ships.

Detail

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