Harris Schrank Fine Prints

Jonas Suyderhoef (1610-1690), La Rixe (The Brawl), after Adriaen Van Ostade (1610-1685), engraving, c. 1660. [with the lettering A. Ostaden pinxit at the bottom left; J. Suyderhoef sculpsit bottom center; and Clemendt de Jonghe excudit bottom right]. Reference: Wussin 127, third state (of 5). In adequate condition but laid down on card, upper right tip repaired, a spot of paint upper left, moderate age toning, trimmed outside of plate mark, 17 3/8 x 14 5/8 inches.

A good impression of this large engraving, in the state before the de Jonghe address was taken off and the address of F. de Wit added. In the fifth state the plate passed into the hands of Basan, who removed the de Wit address.

Suyderhoef created this engraving after van Ostade’s painting in the Pinacotheque in Munich.

The brawl is lively: two peasants threaten each other with knives; a dog cowers below the table at the center; an elderly man moves to pick up a weapon at the right.

Detail

David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690), Les Jouers de Boules (The Bowlers), etching, c 1660. Reference: Dutuit 38, first state (of 2).  With a number of condition issues:  tear through upper left corner and lower right corner restored, foxing, inked in on repaired corners, some rubbed spots, spots of red on man at right. With narrow or thread margins most of the way around, 5 3/4 x 10 inches, 146 x 254 mm.

Provenance:  Sotheby’s Park Bernet New York, auction of old master prints November 3 1983, lot 462.

A fair impression, on paper with a 17th C. watermark of a fleur de lys in crowned shield.

Teniers was of course a major 17th Century Dutch painter (not to be confused with his rather less notable father, DT senior). But most of the prints found with his name are made by others after his paintings. Les Jouers is considered to have been made by the artist himself.

Detail

Detail

Jacques Villon (1875-1963), Yvonne D. de face (Yvonne Duchamp, Full-Face), 1913, drypoint, signed in pencil lower right, and inscribed “ep d’artiste avant ebarbage”. Reference: Ginestet and Pouillon E 281, a proof impression before steelfacing (first state, of 2, see below), in very good condition, on Arches wove paper,21 1/2 x 16 1/4, the sheet 25 1/8 by 23 3/8 inches.

A very fine rare proof impression of this cubist landmark, with the substantial drypoint burr before the drypoint was burnished and the plate was steelfaced.

This is one of the few proofs of Yvonne D. de Face that Villon created before burnishing the drypoint, adding his signature in the plate itself, and steelfacing it.  Another such impression is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  There is also an impression (at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris) in which the bottom third of the print has yet to be completed.

After burnishing of the drypoint, addition of the signature and steelfacing an edition of 28 impressions was printed.  The prints from the edition, though of course still spectacular, lack the richness and depth of the proof impressions.

Innis Howe Shoemaker (Jacques Villon and his Cubist Prints) points out that of Villon’s three monumental drypoint portraits of his sister Yvonne from 1913 the present work is the one in which he used the most radical application of pyramidal construction, which was ultimately derived from his reading of Leonardo da Vinci’s Trattoro della pittura.  Here the figure and ground merge into each other; the separations are created by sets of parallel lines going in different directions, so the segments appear as volumetric planes.  Shoemaker notes:  “In this respect Yvonne de Face surpasses the other two portraits of Yvonne, for Villon has employed a purely graphic technique not only to achieve a clearer integration of figure and space but also to express the idea of Cubist simultaneity: ‘the concurrent and coexisting plurality of points of view organized into a plastic whole'”

Yvonne was the sister of Jacques Villon and the other two Duchamp brothers Marcel Duchamp and the sculptor Raymond Duchamp-Villon (Jacques and Raymond changed their names).

Reginald Marsh (1898-1954), Merry-Go-Round, etching and engraving, 1938, signed in pencil lower right and inscribed Forty Proofs lower left,  [also signed in the plate lower left and inscribed SC]. Reference: Sasowsky 179, fourth state (of 4). In good condition, with margins (a paper loss upper right corner well outside of the platemark, stains from prior hinging, notations in pencil lower margin edge). 10 x 8, the sheet 11 1/2 x 9 1/8 inches.

A very good impression, printed in black on a wove paper with a partial FRANCE watermark.

Sasowsky notes that Marsh printed 15 impressions of this state (and only one or two of the prior states), and considered only 10 of the 15 valuable.  His notation “Forty Proofs” is therefore surely an expression of a hoped-for edition size, as opposed to an actual edition size. We have found this quite often the case with Marsh prints – he indicates an edition size but the actual number of impressions printed is considerably smaller.

There is an eerie, almost ominous note in this, as in several of Marsh’s merry-go-round prints. The man in dark glasses just to the right behind the girl hardly seems the type to be riding merry-go-rounds for recreation, and the woman at the left doesn’t either. The girl rides side-saddle, the better to avoid these characters just behind her. Even the girl’s horse has an expression of wariness in its eye.

There is a painting with a similar composition, but differing in many details, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Mass.

Detail

Adolphe-Marie Beaufrère (1876-1960)

A Douelan, etching, 1923, signed in pencil and numbered (21/50) [also initials and date in the plate]. Reference: Morane 23-07, BN Laran 175. Second state (of 2). In very good condition, printer’s crease bottom margin not near image. With the Sagot Editions, Paris stamp (Lugt 2254). 6 1/4 x 7 3/4, the sheet 8 1/4 x 9 1/2 inches.

A fine impression, with tone, on a blue/green cream laid paper.

The figures on the boat towards the right were added in the second state. The road pictured is along the river on the way to the port of Douelan.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), The Kitchen, etching, 1858, a proof from the Twelve Etchings, signed in pencil by the artist lower right. Reference: Kennedy 24, second state (of 3).  Glasgow 16, second state (of 3). (Glasgow notes that since they have not located any impressions of Kennedy’s described, but not seen, first state, that state might not exist.) From a 1858 printing; there was a later edition of 50 impressions printed in a third state, signed with the butterfly (the pencil butterfly dates from 1879/81). Printed in dark brown ink, chine appliqué on wove.  In generally good condition, with very wide margins, the matrix excellent; the backing sheet with some rubbing lower margin, faded foxing on backing sheet, folded along the far sides toward the edges, and with extensive annotation (see below). 9 x 6 1/4, the sheet 17 x 12 3/16 inches.

An extremely fine early impression, probably a proof before the early printings of the Twelve Etchings in 1858.

The following annotation is found on the sheet, lower margin: “This proof is pronounced by M. Thibaudeau to be ‘perhaps the finest that the plate has yielded.’  (Alphonse Wyatt Thibaudeau (1840-1892) was a well-known art critic and connoisseur and, late in his career, an art dealer; he was,  with Messrs Dowdeswell, publisher of Whistler’s Second Venice Set in 1886.)

Other annotations:

Lower left:  “W. 19.” (The Way catalogue number)
Lower center in ink:  The number “15” inside a circle
Lower center:  “1st etat” (which it may be, see note above)
Lower right:  “62.00”
Lower center/right, above inscription:  “167.”
Verso LL of the printed image written in pencil:  “WHxr” (not located in Lugt, perhaps a dealer’s notation)

The wove backing sheet is larger than ordinarily found for the early, 1858, impressions of The Kitchen,  but the dimensions do correspond to those of the impression at the Hunterian Art Gallery (Glasgow).

It was published in Douze eaux-fortes d’après Nature (the ‘French Set’) in 1858, and by the Fine Art Society in 1885 in an edition of 50.

$13,500