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From David Hockney’s celebrated Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm portfolio, an image from the story of ‘The boy who left home to learn fear’. Hockney chose this story for its obscurity: It was the only story from the Brothers Grimm that he had never read. To illustrate this story, the artist drew from Goya’s aquatints, with their dramatic lighting, and from the bucolic landscapes he observed along Germany’s Rhine river.
Hockney described his reference for this etching: “This was drawn from simply sticking a handkerchief on top of a pencil and watching the folds, so I could draw the correct shadow on the folds and so on.” The murky darkness of night is rendered with tight crosshatching in the style of traditional engraving. The sexton’s feet peek out comically from beneath his billowing disguise, facing the man whose unfazed face betrays no emotion.
Per the British Council: “In this tale a farmer had two sons. The older son was hard working and clever, the younger son whilst stupid and good for nothing was utterly fearless; indeed his only wish in life was to learn to shudder with fear. He was granted his wish and was sent to meet with ghosts and ghouls: first the sexton disguised as a ghost to spending the night with corpses taken down from the gallows to be warmed by a fire, all without a shudder of fear. His fearlessness came to the attention of the King who promised his daughter’s hand in marriage if the younger son could spend three nights in the haunted castle.
After enduring three nights of mayhem and horror without a shudder of fear, the younger son and princess married. Although he lived happily with the princess, he still wished he could shudder with fear. One night the princess’s maid crept into his room, pulled back the blankets and threw a bucketful of cold squirming fish onto the sleeping man who woke with a start, and a shuddered in fear.”
The sexton disguised as a ghost (Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm) 1969
Etching and aquatint on W S Hodgkinson paper watermarked “DH” and “PP”
Plate 9.1 x 10.6 in / 23 x 26.8 cm
Paper 17.75 x 16 in / 45.09 x 40.64 cm
Unique publisher’s copy aside from the edition of 400 books and 100 portfolios
