All the catalogues she has produced over the past decade or so are worthy of note, but number 29, just published and comprising over 380 pages and featuring 785 black and white illustrations, is particularly impressive. Entitled The Seductive Art: The British Passion for Etching, 1850-1950 (ISBN: 1-902863-04-6, £30 by post or £25 at the gallery), it presents a new, priced stock list.
However, with so much informative text on more than 350 artists and an extensive bibliography, it is a publication no collector or dealer of etchings can afford to be without.
Prices for prints start at £75, which buys Apple Blossom by Charles Oliver Murray, RE (1842-1923), and top £3000 for an impression of Au Bord de la Mer (At the Seaside) by James Jacques Joseph Tissot (1836-1902). In between this broad band are works including William Lee Hankey’s (1869-1952) charming drypoint of 1917, Maternité (£400), Donald Maxwell’s (1877-1936) atmospheric colour etching and aquatint, A Nocturne of Chelsea (£450), Joseph Gray’s (1890-1962) simple yet effective drypoint of 1925, Breakers (£165) and Graham Sutherland’s (1903-1980) highly finished and closely worked etching of 1926, Lammas (£2000).
The gallery catalogues that should be etched on a trophy
The recent British Antiques and Collectables Awards did not have a category for ‘best gallery catalogue’ (sponsors, please note); however, if there had been, Elizabeth Harvey-Lee (1 West Cottages, Middle Aston Road, North Aston, Oxon OX25 5QB. Tel: 01869 347164) would surely have been on the shortlist.
