Search Results

(b Holywood, County Down, Ireland, Jan 26, 1922).

Australian painter, printmaker, book designer, lecturer, collector, gallery director and publisher of limited edition artists’ books, of Irish decent. He worked as a draughtsman before entering war service in the British Admiralty from 1940 to 1949, including five years in Colombo, where he made sketching trips to jungle temples with the Buddhist monk and artist Manjsiro Thero. Between 1949 and 1951 Adams worked as an exhibition designer in London and studied wood-engraving with Gertrude Hermes in her evening class at the Central School of Arts and Crafts (now Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design). In 1951, after moving to Melbourne, Adams began a 30-year teaching commitment at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), where he instructed many of the younger generation of Australian printmakers, including George Baldessin and Jan Senbergs. A brief return to Britain and Ireland in 1957–8 provided experience with Dolmen Press, Dublin, which published his first book of engravings, ...

(b Mantua, 1558–9; d 1629).

Italian woodcutter and printer. He was the only printmaker to produce a significant number of chiaroscuro woodcuts in Italy in the second half of the 16th century; he also reprinted chiaroscuro woodblocks originally cut 60 or 70 years earlier. He made at least 35 prints in both black and white and colour (many multiple-sheet), using a sophisticated style of cutting characterized by thin, closed contours. Based in Florence in 1584–5 and from 1586 in Siena, by 1590 he was also finding work in his native Mantua, where he is documented as establishing a workshop. He reproduced the designs of artists in diverse media with great fidelity: for example he made several prints (1586–90) after Domenico Beccafumi’s intarsia pavement designs in Siena Cathedral, three prints (1584) from different angles of Giambologna’s marble sculpture of the Rape of the Sabines (Florence, Loggia dei Lanzi; see fig.), as well as of the bas-relief on the base of the same group and of Giambologna’s relief of ...

(fl Basle, 1485; d 1524).

German engraver and printer. He established himself in Basle in 1485 but subsequently worked as a printer in Strasbourg (1487, 1488), Pforzheim (1500–10), Tübingen (1511–17) and Hagenau (1516–22). Although a few of his prints bear dates between 1501 and 1506, stylistically his work belongs to the 15th-century tradition....

(b New York, March 17, 1822; d New York, Aug 11, 1904)

American wood-engraver, art dealer, collector and philanthropist. Avery’s career as a wood-engraver and his involvement with the New York publishing trade began in the early 1840s. He worked for, among others, Appleton’s, the New York Herald and Harper’s and produced illustrations for trade cards, religious tracts, adventure stories and children’s books. By the early 1850s Avery had begun compiling humorous books and commissioning drawings from such artist-illustrators as Felix Octavius Carr Darley, John Whetten Ehninger, Augustus Hoppin (1827–96), Tompkins Harrison Matteson and John McLenan (1827–66). His business contacts led to close relationships with such artists as Frederick Church, John F. Kensett and William Trost Richards.

By the late 1850s Avery had begun to collect drawings and small cabinet pictures by local artists. Other art collectors, notably William T. Walters, asked Avery’s advice when commissioning works of art. In 1864 he turned his engraving practice over to ...

[Pieter]

(b Antwerp, c. 1526–28; d Antwerp, 1584).

South Netherlandish painter, draughtsman, engraver and publisher. He was the son of the sculptor Balten Janszoon de Costere (fl 1524). In 1550 he became a master in the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp and in 1569 its dean. Primarily on the authority of van Mander, Baltens was long considered to be an inferior imitator of Bruegel family, §1 the elder. Baltens’s best-known work, the signed St Martin’s Day Kermis (e.g. versions Amsterdam, Rijksmus.; Antwerp, Kon. Mus. S. Kst.), was formerly thought to be a free copy after Bruegel’s treatment of the subject, known through an engraving and the Gift of St Martin, a fragment on cloth (Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.). The relationship between Baltens and Bruegel is, however, more complicated. In 1551 they collaborated on an altarpiece (destr.) for the Mechelen Glovemakers. Baltens’s other works, for example the Ecce homo (Antwerp, Kon. Acad. S. Kst.), reveal that the two artists were closely associated: a group from the ...

(b Belluno, Jan 7, 1724; d Venice, July 28, 1787).

Italian printmaker . A highly prolific engraver and etcher, he frequented the Venetian workshop of the engraver and print publisher Joseph Wagner (1708–80), later succeeding Giuliano Giampiccoli as the head of the Remondini workshop at Bassano. Gifted with considerable technical ability, Baratti had a part in illustrating a great number of costly publications, mostly Venetian, and he engraved almost one thousand plates for the Livorno edition of the Encyclopédie (1770–79). His most famous prints are the four sheets illustrating the celebrations held in Venice in 1782 to honour the visit of the Comte and Comtesse du Nord (Grand Duke Paul and Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna of Russia). He collaborated with other artists on the Via Crucis published by Wagner in 1779, engraved numerous portraits of artists and scholars and also executed religious subjects after Guido Reni, Veronese, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta and Francesco Vanni, genre subjects after Giorgio Giacoboni (...

(b Sion Hill, Worcs, Jan 28, 1706; d Birmingham, Jan 8, 1775).

English printer and publisher . He developed skills in calligraphy and monumental inscription–cutting apparently without an apprenticeship. Aged 19 he went to Birmingham to teach writing and bookkeeping and also to cut tombstones. Around 1740 he entered into business as a manufacturer of japanned goods, at which he proved highly successful. The proceeds enabled him to purchase a large house outside Birmingham and to start experimenting with type-founding c. 1750. Baskerville entered into partnership with the London bookseller Robert Dodsley (1733–64), and he published an edition of the works of Virgil as his first book in 1757; it met with praise but also with the criticism that was to follow him throughout much of his career: the print was too dazzling, the strokes too narrow and the paper too glossy. Baskerville’s types achieved their effect by his modification of the stress nearer the vertical; the transition between thick and thin strokes was more pronounced than in previous types, and the general effect was of greater precision. He may not have set up his own paper mill, as has been suggested, but he certainly exploited the properties of the newly developed wove paper and pressed it to achieve a crisp finish (...

[Bononia, Baveram de; Carocci, Baverio de’]

(fl c. 1515–after 1527).

Italian printer. From northern Italy, possibly of German descent, he was an assistant in Raphael’s workshop in Rome. From 1515–16 he was the workshop printer of the engraved plates that Raphael commissioned from Marcantonio Raimondi. He is mentioned in documents dated 1515, 1516 and 1523. After Raphael’s death in 1520, he evidently continued in his position under the new head of the workshop, Giulio Romano. He became an independent printer in 1524 and was still working in Rome after the Sack in 1527. According to Vasari, Baviera printed plates engraved by Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio, including the Labours of Hercules (b. 44–9), the Gods and Goddesses in Niches (b. 24–43), the Loves of the Gods (b. 9–23) and the Rape of the Sabine Women (b. 63).

(b Thionville, 1507, or Lunéville, 1515; d Rome, c. 1565).

French engraver. He was probably related to a family of goldsmiths from Nancy, but his working life was spent in Italy. He produced many engravings for publishers in Rome and specialized mostly in reproducing Italian paintings, views of ancient Rome and to a lesser extent portraits. He worked for the engraver and publisher Tommaso Barlacchi in 1541 and 1550, producing Joseph Interpreting Pharaoh’s Dreams (Robert-Dumesnil, no. 2), the Ascension (rd 14) and Christ Delivering Souls from Limbo (rd 15) after Raphael. He also worked for Antonio Salamanca, for whom he made versions of paintings by Raphael, Michelangelo (e.g. Virgin of Sorrows, 1547; rd 18) and Baccio Bandinelli (e.g. Struggle between Reason and the Passions, 1545; rd 36).

After 1547 Beatrizet seems to have worked for Antoine Lafréry, for whom he made engravings of views of Roman monuments and antique sculptures—for example The Pantheon (rd 103) and the ...

French family of printmakers and print-publishers. Jacques-Firmin Beauvarlet (b Abbeville, 25 Sept 1731; d Paris, 7 Dec 1797) was an etcher, engraver and print-publisher. He came to Paris in 1750 and trained in turn with Robert Hecquet (1693–1775), Charles Dupuis and Laurent Cars. In 1762 he was appointed Graveur du Roi and in the same year was approved (agréé) by the Académie Royale, although he was not made a member (reçu) until 1776; his morceau de réception was a portrait of Edme Bouchardon after the painting by François-Hubert Drouais (Paris, Louvre). In 1761 Beauvarlet married Catherine-Françoise Deschamps (b Paris, 1737; d Paris, 7 July 1769), an engraver and etcher. Her small body of work (around 15 pieces) was mostly published by her husband between 1761 and 1769. She engraved genre scenes after Greuze, such as the Coal Merchant and the ...

[Benday prints]

Manufactured transparent celluloid sheets of tints consisting of dots or a variety of patterns used widely in blockmaking and lithography to add texture, shading and detail to artwork and designs. The name derives from Benjamin Day, a printer from New Jersey, USA, who was the first to patent and sell ‘shading mediums’ in ...

Italian family of typographers, engravers, publishers and print dealers. Members of the family were active in Venice and Padua in the 16th century and the early 17th. Most notable among them were Luca Bertelli (fl Venice, c. 1560; fl Padua, 1594), Orazio Bertelli (fl Venice, 1562–88), who was possibly Luca’s brother, and Ferdinando (Ferrando, Ferrante) Bertelli (fl Venice, 1561–72). It is difficult to determine the extent of Luca Bertelli’s participation in the execution of the prints he published; they were mainly historical, religious and mythological. Orazio Bertelli probably encouraged Agostino Carracci’s visit to Venice in 1582. Orazio’s engravings included the works of Federico Barocci, Domenico Tibaldi and Paolo Veronese, notably a Pietà (De Grazia, p. 125, no. 102). Ferdinando Bertelli was best known for his publication of a vast number of maps, by both Italian and foreign cartographers.

(b Antwerp, bapt Oct 22, 1622; d Paris, Sept 3, 1674).

Flemish painter, draughtsman and etcher. He came from an artistic family: his father Jan Boel (1592–1640), was an engraver, publisher and art dealer; his uncle Quirin Boel I was an engraver; and his brother Quirin Boel II (1620–40) was also a printmaker. Pieter was probably apprenticed in Antwerp to Jan Fyt, but may have studied previously with Frans Snyders. He then went to Italy, probably visiting Rome and Genoa, where he is supposed to have stayed with Cornelis de Wael. None of Boel’s work from this period is known. In 1650 he became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke (having given his first name as Jan, not Pieter). His marriage to Maria Blanckaert took place at about the same time. Boel dated only a few of his paintings, making it difficult to establish a chronology. He is best known for his hunting scenes, some of which clearly show his debt to Snyders, but the dominant influence on his work was that of Fyt, particularly evident in his emphatic brushwork. However, Boel was more restrained both in his treatment and in his handling of outline. He also borrowed the theme of open-air hunting still-lifes (e.g. ...

[Schelderic](Adamsz.)

(b Bolsward, c. 1586; d Antwerp, Dec 12, 1659).

Dutch engraver and publisher, brother of Boetius Bolswert. He was probably a pupil of his brother in Amsterdam. He engraved a number of prints after such artists as Vinckboons (e.g. Christ Entering Jerusalem, 1612; Hollstein, no. 14), Gillis van Coninxloo III and Abraham Bloemaert. He moved to the southern Netherlands and in 1617 was working for the publishers Plantin–Moretus in Antwerp. Schelte devoted himself mainly to religious prints (e.g. the Life of St Augustine series, 1624; Hollstein, nos 201–28) and became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke in 1625–6. Until 1627 he worked in Brussels and Antwerp on Gérard Thibault’s Académie de l’espée (Leiden, 1628; Hollstein, no. 327).

Schelte Bolswert’s career as an engraver of Rubens’s work began with the Lion Hunt (?1628; Hollstein, no. 298), but the majority of this reproductive work was executed after 1630. In all, Schelte made about eighty engravings after Rubens, of which only four, however, were authorized by Rubens: the ...

(b Paris, 1736; d Saint-Mandé, nr Paris, Oct 20, 1793).

French engraver and publisher. He came from a family of artisans and owed his training in engraving to his brother-in-law, the engraver Louis Legrand (1723–1808). Through Legrand, Bonnet became the pupil of Jean-Charles François in 1756, a year before the latter discovered the Crayon manner technique of engraving, designed to reproduce the effect of a coloured-chalk drawing. Around the end of 1757 Bonnet used the new technique to engrave a Cupid (see Hérold, no. 2A) after François Eisen. Gilles Demarteau, a rival of Jean-Charles François, enticed Bonnet to join his workshop and learnt the technique from him.

Bonnet engraved some 15 plates for Demarteau, and in 1760 he set up his own shop. During this period he strove to perfect the crayon manner by producing prints using several different plates, each inked with a different colour. Initially, he tried to reproduce drawings executed in black and white chalk on blue or buff paper; to do this he had to make a white ink that would not yellow with age. He was the first to use points of reference to print several plates one on top of the other. In ...

(b Mechelen, 1545; d Antwerp, 1608).

Flemish painter, engraver and draughtsman. His identity is confused: it is known that a painter called Pieter van der Borcht worked in Mechelen for the Antwerp publisher Christoph Plantin from 1564 onwards. From 1552 until at least 1592 this artist—referred to as Pieter van der Borcht IV by Hollstein and as Pieter van der Borcht II by Bénézit—made etchings as well as woodcuts with the inscription fecit petrus van der borcht.

In addition, there was a Pieter van der Borcht active in Mechelen, who, after 1552, made woodcuts which he signed p.b. Thus, either one artist had a steady output of woodcuts and etchings over a long career (1552–c. 1600) or there were a number of artists with the same name. The second hypothesis seems the more likely. It is supported by other facts. In 1580 a ‘Pieter Verborcht, painter’ became a master in the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp, of which he served as dean in ...

(Scott)

(b 1864; d 1946).

English mezzotint engraver. He lived in Bushey, Herts, and worked for most of the leading London print publishers and dealers. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy, London, in 1889, with A Schoolgirl after Luke Fildes, and continued to show there until his death in 1946, when his only exhibited original work, ...

(fl 1660–83)

English miniature painter, writer, printmaker and print publisher. In 1665 he taught limning to Elizabeth Pepys, wife of Samuel Pepys, probably on the recommendation of Pepys’s superior, Sir William Penn, whose daughter he had previously taught. Pepys, finding Browne over-familiar, terminated the acquaintance the following year. In 1669 Browne published Ars Pictoria, or an Academy Treating of Drawing, Painting, Limning and Etching, with 31 plates etched by himself after Old Master painters. It was published with Browne’s portrait by Jacob Huysmans, engraved by Arnold de Jode (b 1638; fl 1658–66), as its frontispiece. Six years later Browne added An Appendix to the Art of Painting in Miniture [sic] or Limning, etc and in 1677 published A Commodious Drawing Book with 40 plates after modern masters. In 1683, according to Horace Walpole, Browne obtained a 14-year patent to publish 100 mezzotint prints from works by Anthony van Dyck and ...

(b Liège, 1561; d Frankfurt am Main, 1623).

Franco-Flemish engraver, etcher, printmaker, and publisher, son of Theodor de Bry. He was the most prolific printmaker of the family, practising both engraving and etching. With his father and his brother Johann Israel, he published two popular emblem books: Emblemata nobilitate et vulgo scitu digna (Frankfurt am Main, 1593; Paris, ...

(b Verona or Parma, c. 1500–05; d ?Kraków, Aug 26, 1565).

Italian engraver, goldsmith and medallist, active also in Poland. He is first recorded in 1526 in the entourage of Marcantonio Raimondi in Rome. There the printer and publisher Baviera introduced him to Rosso Fiorentino, whose allegory Fury he engraved (b. 58). Caraglio continued to collaborate with Rosso and engraved several suites, such as the Labours of Hercules (b. 44–9), Pagan Divinities in Niches (b. 24–43) and Loves of the Gods (b.9–23; two after Rosso and eighteen after Perino del Vaga). After the Sack of Rome (1527), Caraglio took refuge in Venice, where he made engravings after Titian (b. 3, 64). His presence is recorded there until 1537.

By 1539 Caraglio was in Poland, probably at the recommendation of his friend Pietro Aretino, who had contacts in the court of Bona Sforza (1494–1557), wife of Sigismund I, King of Poland. By ...