print
- Museum number
- 1987,0516.69
- Title
- Object: Usher
- Description
-
Surrealist composition with triangles and heart-shape on easel. c.1933
Etching with soft-ground and aquatint
- Production date
- 1933
- Dimensions
-
Height: 249 millimetres
-
Width: 153 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Text from Frances Carey & Antony Griffiths, 'Avant-Garde British Printmaking 1914-1960', BMP 1990, no.112.
Made in three stages. First the three lines were bitten, some very deeply, others more lightly. Then a fabric was pressed into a new soft etching ground, and stopped out to leave a white margin along the left and right sides. Finally a fine aquatint ground was laid on the plate, but stopped out so that only the margin was bitten. This produced an irregular join between the soft-ground and aquatint areas, which shows white in places. Trevelyan toned down some of the more glaring gaps in this impression by going over them with a pencil. The use of the impressed soft-ground fabric texture, invented by Hayter in 1933, shows that the plate cannot be dated earlier than that year; its sophistication suggests that it is one of the last prints that Trevelyan made in Paris. It may have been made at the same time as the etching 'Figure after Piero della Francesca' (1987,0516.73), for which a preliminary idea exists in the sketchbook dated 'Summer Autumn 1933' (Tate Gallery Archive).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1990/1 Sept.-Jan., BM, 'Avant-Garde British Printmaking 1914-1960', no.112
- Acquisition date
- 1987
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1987,0516.69