Halberstadt III
Emil Ganso (1895-1941), Halberstadt III, 1929, etching, aquatint, soft-ground etching, roulette, signed in pencil lower right,and numbered 13/35 lower left; also titled lower center. Reference: Smith I 59, second state (of 2), from the edition of 35. In very good condition, with some printer’s fingerprints in the margin edges, on a sturdy ivory wove paper with margins, 9 13/16 x 11 15/16, the sheet 11 x 15 inches, matted.
A fine atmospheric impression.
Provenance: Weyhe Gallery, still in their original worn mat, with their cataloguing annotations. Weyhe, one of the oldest and most distinguished Madison Avenue New York dealers, was Ganso’s dealer.
Halberstadt III is a tour de force of etching techniques. Ganso uses 3 levels of aquatint tone, as well as soft ground etching (creating lines through a thin sheet of paper over a soft ground, then picking up the paper to reveal broad lines which are then subjected to acid) and conventional etching; he also uses a roulette tool in just a few places, e.g., for shading of the girl at the right getting water from the well.
In 1929, on the eve of the Great Depression, Ganso made an extended trip to Europe to see his family, with the encouragement of his dealer Erhard Weyhe and Frank Crowninshield of Vanity Fair. The Halberstadt etchings date from this trip, as do a number of other etchings, mostly landscapes.