Joel Ballin, Bust of a 75-Year-Woman, 1850, Etching

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An original antique etched portrait of the bust of a woman of seventy five by Joel Ballin, circa 1850. The … Read more An original antique etched portrait of the bust of a woman of seventy five by Joel Ballin, circa 1850. The sitter has not been named, and this listing does not offer a name that nobody has read off the sheet; the technique and the date are those recorded when it was examined by hand. Prints of this kind were issued in their own day for a wide public of collectors, readers and admirers, and where no name is attached they are collected for the quality of the drawing, the character of the face and the hand of the maker. The print is by the Danish engraver and etcher Joel Ballin. Etching was the painter engraver's medium. The artist draws with a needle through an acid resistant ground laid on a copper plate, and the lines are then bitten into the metal with acid, so an etched line keeps the freedom of a drawing in a way that a line cut with the burin rarely does. This sheet came to the gallery in a group of eighty five portrait prints kept together as lot BG-14343. Because eleven of them carry the imprint of William Mackenzie of Glasgow, Edinburgh, London and New York, the group was first taken for a single Victorian biographical series. Identification sheet by sheet has shown that it is something more interesting: a gathering of portraits from across Europe and across two and a half centuries, in engraving, etching and lithography. Each sheet is therefore described on its own evidence and not on the group's. Portrait prints have been collected in their own right since the eighteenth century, when James Granger's Biographical History of England of 1769 set off a fashion for illustrating books with portraits of the people named in them, and they are still collected today for the sitter, for the maker and for the face itself. A single portrait frames well in a narrow moulding with a generous mat, and a group of them hung together, whether by period, by profession or simply by the strength of the faces, makes one of the most satisfying walls there is for a study, a library, a landing or a dining room. The sheet is in good condition for its age; it is trimmed close to the image without margins, with light edge wear, and the image is clean and strong. This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed. See less