10 Under £10k, Master Prints from Rembrandt to Warhol

10 Under £10k, Master Prints from Rembrandt to Warhol

• After Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Dirty Bride or the Wedding of Mopsus and Nisa (Bastelaer, Hollstein 126; New Hollstein 45), Engraving, 1570, Estimate £8,000–12,000

  Bruegel’s playful pen and ink drawing (circa 1566) of street actors performing The Dirty Bride was originally meant to serve as the study for a woodcut. Shortly after his death in 1569, publisher Hieronymous Cock thought it best to issue his comical subject as an engraving. This superb impression is particularly animate, with a rich veil of tone and vertical wiping marks adding depth and rhythm to the droll affair.

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• Hendrick Goltzius, The Great Standard-Bearer (Bartsch 125; Hollstein 255; Strauss 253), Engraving, 1587, Estimate £5,000–7,000

  Goltzius’ sartorial soldier represents the landsknechte, the company of formidable German mercenaries established by Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. The role was high-risk and high-reward. While the foot soldiers were exempt from sumptuary laws and encouraged to enjoy the finer things, their lives were brutish and brief. This particular engraving boasts fabulous provenance, having once belonged to Friedrich August II of Saxony.

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• Rembrandt Harmensz. Van Rijn, Self-Portrait in a Cap and Scarf with Dark Face: Bust (B., Holl. 17; New Holl. 120; H. 108), Etching, 1633, Estimate £6,000–8,000

  The ever resourceful Rembrandt looked no further than the mirror to study the human form. Etching thirty-two known self-portraits from the 1620s – 30s, he mastered both the medium and a heightened sense of realism. Dated 1633, Self-Portrait in a Cap and Scarf with Face Dark: Bust shows a calm and poised young artist who is just beginning to enjoy success in Amsterdam.

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• Camille Pissarro, Untitled (Femme à sa Toilette), Monotype printed in black and ochre, circa 1894, Estimate £8,000–12,000
  

  Pissarro is said to have approached his monotypes with gusto, boldly and freely experimenting with inky configurations directly on the plate. He largely worked in solely in black, making this painterly print one of only a few subjects enhanced by colour. The ochre accents bring a sense of warmth to Pissarro’s domestic interior, evoking a sense of nostalgia.
  

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• Pablo Picasso, Vénus et l’amour, 3e variation (Bloch 614; Mourlot 184), Lithograph, 1949, Estimate £7,000–10,000

  Picasso became enamoured with lithography while working alongside legendary printer Fernand Mourlot at his storied Parisian atelier. The painter-printmaker spent much of the late 1940’s exploring the rheological properties of lithographic ink. His imaginative reinterpretation of Lucas Cranach’s mythological subject demonstrates his ultimate command of the fluid, yet velvety, medium.
  

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• Wassily Kandinsky, Lithographie No. III (Roethel 187), Lithograph, 1925, Estimate £7,000–9,000

  From the collection of the esteemed Dr. Erika Pohl-Ströher, Kandinksy’s 1925 lithograph demonstrates the power of reductive forms and abstraction to convey musicality. Printed in black with sand-coloured plate tone, the Blaue Reiter artist’s print features fanciful shapes and textures that suggest instrumental tones and rhythm.

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• Josef Albers, Homage to the Square, Screenprint in colours, 1964, Estimate £2,000–4,000

  Of the forms that comprise his seminal series of paintings Homage to the Square, Bauhaus pioneer Joseph Albers said: “they move forth and back, in and out, and grow up and down and near and far, as well as enlarged and diminished. All this, to proclaim color autonomy as a means of a plastic organization.” (As cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Museum of Modern Art, Josef Albers: Homage to the Square, 1964) This sunny screenprint after his paintings achieves the same optical effect, demonstrating his skill across media.

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• David Hockney, Celia Inquiring (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo 223), Lithograph, 1979, Estimate £6,000–8,000

  Textile designer and Sixties style icon Celia Birtwell never imagined she would become a creative muse. Today, Celia is described as “the face that launched a thousand prints,” immortalised throughout David Hockney’s graphic oeuvre. Introduced to Celia in 1968, Hockney was attracted to her “beautiful…very rare face” and her “intuitive knowledge and kindness,” which are best represented in Celia Inquiring.

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• Andy Warhol, Electric Chair (F. & S. II.78), Screenprint in colours, 1971, Estimate £4,000–6,000

  Both macabre and candy-coated, this 1971 screenprint is the culmination of Warhol’s decade-long study of empty electric chairs and execution chambers. Printed in mauve, it is an equally poignant and “Pop” treatment of one of America’s grislier icons. The image reflects the socio-political controversy surrounding the United States’s death penalty, and coincides with his Death and Disaster series, which explored the numbing effect of the media with gruesome images inspired by contemporary headlines.

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• Roy Lichtenstein, Pyramid (Corlett 62), Screenprint multiple in yellow and black, 1968, Estimate £2,000–4,000

  “Architect of Pop” Roy Lichtenstein was inspired by iconic architectural landscapes from the New York City skyline to the pyramids of Giza. Applying his signature Benday dots to the Great Pyramid, he instantly modernized one of the world’s oldest and most recognizable forms. When painting his celebrated canvases of the Egyptian subject, he relied on one of his own three-dimensional renderings from this edition as a model.
  

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