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“The two flirtatious Dublin barmaids are the ‘Sirens’ in the eleventh episode of Ulysses. They pull beer for their male clients in the bar of the Ormond Hotel late in the afternoon. Reflected in the mirror is jaunty Blazes Boylan with yellow straw boater eyeing bronze-haired Miss Douce by blonde-haired Miss Kennedy. Bloom with his back turned to his rival salutes an acquaintance in the dining room. The subdued colours of Hamilton’s plate correspond to the air of melancholy that suffuses Joyce’s episode. Joyce’s themes of desire, loss and betrayal are voiced through a complex fugue of song, music and sounds within the Dublin bar.
The origins of this print are found in two working drawings of 1949. An initial pen and ink study focusses on the faces of the two barmaids, Miss Douce and Miss Kennedy, and their relationship to each other; it also includes the beerpull with its erotic connotations. The composition is fully realized in a preparatory watercolour of 1949 which became the basis for the subsequent colour plate made between 1985 and 1987. The plate developed from working drawings, a second preparatory watercolour, 3 as well as through twelve stage proofs. These show further minor adjustments to the composition. Bronze Miss Douce’s grip on the beerpull is more relaxed, while the beerglass is brought closer to the beerpull to catch the foaming Dublin brew.
These subtle changes make for a closer visualization of Joyce’s text: ‘On the smooth jutting beerpull laid Lydia hand lightly, plumply, leave it to my hands. … her thumb and finger passed in pity: passed, repassed and, gently touching, then slid so smoothly, slowly down, a cool firm white enamel baton protruding through their sliding ring’ (U, 274).
Printing the colour plates proved to be a major problem because the French
method4 used by the Atelier Crommelynck required the ink to dry before a new colour was applied.
This prolonged the proofing process unduly and created difficulties with the registration of the plates. In the end Hamilton, with the agreement of Aldo Crommelynck, took the plates to Vienna where the printer Kurt Zein printed them using the wet-on-wet method.”
-Steven Coppel
Bronze by gold 1985-87
Soft-ground, lift-ground aquatint, engraving, scraper and burnisher in 23 colours from 5 plates on Rives paper
plate 20.7 x 16.8 in / 52.6 x 42.7 cm paper 29.92 x 21.85 in / 76 x 55.5 cm
12 stage proofs in Paris and 5 stage proofs in Vienna Printing: the artist and Kurt Zein, Vienna; plates made at Atelier Crommelynck, Paris
Edition: 120 + 12 artist’s proofs
Publisher: Waddington Graphics, London
Catalogue reference: Lullin 146
Condition: Frame in adequate condition: some splitting lower left and right corners, general wear and tear, frame with some movement and unsteadiness
