Life, A Personal Journey 1981

Lithograph on B F K Rives wove paper printed to edges, 877 x 598mm. Signed, dated and numbered in pencil from the small edition of 12. Printed at the Curwen Studio, Cambridge 1981. Excellent condition, unframed.

Was £475 Now £275

Also titled Autoportrait. A rare print by this contemporary artist, whose early work is represented in the Saatchi collection. McGinn was still a student at the Royal College of Art when he made this lithograph. It’s a worrying, but at the same time hopeful image, if you look closely.

A Grammar of Ornament 1976

Screenprint on Somerset textured paper, 1010 x 710mm (sheet), 812 x 534mm (image). Signed and numbered in pencil from the edition of 50, printed at Advanced Graphics and published by Waddington Galleries, London 1976 as number four in the artist’s A walk to the Studio series. Excellent condition, unframed.

Collections: Tate Gallery, Government Art Collection; British Council; Blanton Museum of Art, Texas

Was £375 Now £275

The Tom Phillips estate website tells us: ‘The fourth of the prints is a tribute to a great Welshman, Owen Jones, whose monumental tome The Grammar of Ornament is (for those with strength enough to lift it down from the shelf) a treasure house of design and motif as well as a masterpiece of book production. Borrowing his format I have made an assemblage of the various pieces of ornamental paper that littered these streets in 1976 and have tried to treat them with the care that would have been their automatic right were they the sweet-wrappers of Babylon or the fancy paper-bags of Troy. These various unconsidered trifles are presented in their natural sizes and surrounded by a decorative border which is the much enlarged back of a humdrum playing card: although one of the cheapest kinds of plasticated card, the deliberate intricacy is still delicate and well-drawn on this scale.’

Llangloffan 1971

Offset lithographic reproduction on hot-pressed paper, 395 x 575mm (image), 810 x 592mm (sheet). Signed in pencil from the edition of 750, published by the Fine Art Trade Guild in association with the Cavendish Collection (with their blindstamps), London 1980. Excellent condition, unframed.

Reference: Levinson p.118

£575 (Not in Sale)

Journey 1950

Monotype on buff cartridge paper 395 × 564mm (image), 466 × 640mm (sheet). Signed in crayon. Printed by the artist from glass, Great Bardfield 1950. Very good original condition, framed.

Provenance: Austin Desmond and Phipps. Reference: The Prints of Michael Rothenstein (Sidey 37)

Was £2,200 Now £1,650

The image depicts a woman sitting in a railway carriage wearing a large, flowery hat. It combines Rothenstein’s love of travel, in particular by rail, and the influences he drew from his many trips to Paris after the war. As a monotype, this piece is unique and, quite frankly, museum quality.

Turkey and Farm Machine III 1959

Linocut on buff cartridge paper, 631 x 912mm (sheet), 563 x 865mm (image). Signed and numbered in pencil from the edition of 20 printed by the artist and Peter White, Great Bardfield 1959. Very good original condition, framed to conservation standards in a solid wood, rounded frame.

Collections: Fry Art Gallery; Cuming Collection. Ref. Sidey 114 (illustrated pl xi).

Was £2,200 Now £1,450

This is the largest and most successful of Rothenstein’s four images of a turkey perched on the saddle of an old sulky plow in the farmyard backing on to the artist’s home at Ethel House in Great Bardfield. Rothenstein himself notes in his print journal that this linocut is a ‘fine example of whipping-back during printing’.

Cornish Harbour, Mousehole 1951

Lithograph on wove paper 328 × 407mm (image size), 449 × 569mm (sheet size). Signed in pencil and numbered one from the edition of 60. Printed at Bath Academy of Art, Corsham and published by the Artist’s International Association for the Festival of Britain Exhibition in 1951. Excellent condition, framed to museum standards in a hidden-mitre, distressed gunmetal-effect wood frame with UV protection glass.

Literature: Avante-Garde British Printmaking (British Museum p.193). Reference: Archeus 5. Collections: Arts Council, Government Art Collection; Museum of New Zealand. Provenance: with The Fine Art Society, exhibited 1992 (label verso)

Was £7,500 Now £6,500

This is my (and most others) favourite William Scott print. Important, from a key date and hard to find, especially in such fabulous condition; it is also an excellent example of how, sometimes, the realisation of an image through printmaking surpasses its painted cousins. 1951 was a pivotal year for Scott: he gained renown through his first solo exhibition at London’s famous Leicester Galleries and was invited to participate in the Festival of Britain. Stylistically, too, 1951 saw a shift from defined figurative compositions towards looser abstraction.

Two Lovers 1966

Lithograph on handmade Barcham Green paper 395 x 595mm. Signed, dated and numbered from the edition of 100. Published and printed by Curwen Prints, London 1966. Excellent condition, unframed.

Collection: Tate Gallery. Provenance: Curwen Gallery Archive

Was £375 Now £275

The Crab 1929

Linocut on thin, cream wove paper, 125 × 155mm (image), 218 × 177mm (sheet). Signed, dated, titled and numbered in pencil from the edition of 50 (unlikely to have been completed). Printed at Grosvenor School of Art, London 1929. Good condition, framed to conservation standards in a hand-painted brown beveled sustainable wood frame.

Provenance: Grosvenor Gallery

Was £575 Now £475

Printed at the Grosvenor School of Art, London 1929, it is unlikely the edition was ever completed. Sherwood exhibited an example of this linocut at the Redfern Gallery in 1934 (cat.78) and, the following year, a linocut titled Snakes Heads at the National Gallery of Canada’s Modern Colour Prints exhibition. Exceptionally rare, this is a little gem of a Vorticist-inspired image. My thanks to Stephen Coppel for his help with my research.

Moruroa 1973

Embossed etching from five plates on T H Saunders hot-pressed paper printed to edges 588 × 535mm, signed, titled and numbered in pencil from the edition of 150. Printed by the artist at the influential Print Workshop (set up by Skiold herself on Charlotte Street in 1957); published by Editions Alecto, London and used as the front cover of their Alecto Monographs series no.9 Birgit Skiold. A copy of the monograph accompanies the sale of this work. Good original condition, some slight toning to the sheet, framed in its original 1970s aluminium frame.

£175 (Not in Sale)

The image, like much of Skiold’s work, was inspired by her life-long love of Oriental art and specifically her pilgrimage to Japan in 1970 where she became fascinated by the Zen Gardens. The subtle colouring and mixed aquatint techniques has made this beautifully serene image very difficult to photograph accurately. Really you need to see it in the flesh.

Hatching II 1977

Aquatint on Magnani laid paper 565 × 456mm (sheet), 400 × 310mm (image). Signed in pencil, a printer’s proof aside from the edition of 100 printed by Valter and Eleonora Rossi at 2RC, Rome. Published by Marlborough Fine Art and 2RC as part of The Bees suite of 14 aquatints. Excellent condition, framed to conservation standards in a plain black wood frame.

Collections: The Royal Collection; Museum of Wales. Reference: Graham Sutherland Complete Graphic Work (Tassi 181)

£ RESERVED

The most important British artist of his generation, Graham Sutherland began and ended his career as a printmaker. It is anathema to me that his etchings, aquatints and lithographs are so undervalued today. In an article I was commissioned to write for Printmaking Today a few months ago, I cited Sutherland’s prints as among the best investments for the future. Here, I’m putting my money where my mouth is: Hatching II is not the most commercial image in the world, I grant you, it’s unsettling – nightmarish even – but that’s why I like it, typical of Sutherland’s fascination with “the skull beneath the skin”, as his friend, T S Eliot wrote.