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Collotype and screen print on Schoeller Elfenbein-Karton paper
Image 21.5 x 27.1 in. / 54.8 x 49.5 cm
Paper 32.4 × 27.4 in. / 82 × 70 cm
Titled and labeled 1st proof lower left in pencil, dated December 70 and signed by the artist lower right in pencil. Edition 140 with 14 proofs, this copy labeled 1st proof. Collotype printed by the artist and Heinz Häfner at Eberhard Schreiber, Stuttgart, screenprinted by the artist and Dieter Dietz at Dietz Offizin, Lengmoos, Bavaria.
This haunting portrait of Richard Hamilton is layered with textured lavender surrounding his form. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art: “In 1969, at the end of a characteristically wine-soaked lunch at Robert Carrier’s London restaurant with the artist Francis Bacon (1909–1992), Hamilton asked Bacon to photograph him against the drapes of the dining room. The first exposure was blurry from Bacon’s tipsy handling of the Polaroid, but Hamilton found the image to have an affinity with Bacon’s distinctive style of painting. Working with oil on collotype copies of that portrait, Hamilton produced seven studies from which Bacon was to select his favorite. He chose the seventh study in which Hamilton had covered the blurred curtains with a particularly Bacon-esque violet.”
Condition: Upper 4” of print is rippled. Dimples and soft horseshoe creases throughout sheet. ½” discolored circle between image and upper edge. Tape residue upper corners of verso. See photographs for documentation.
