C1925

A Group of Trees.

Artist:

Henri Benedictus van Raalte (1881 - 1929)

Fine etching printed in sepia numbered 15 of 35 and signed in pencil lower right .

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S/N: PM-VAN-RAA-084–224724
(C113)
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Details

Full Title:

A Group of Trees.

Date:

C1925

Artist:

Henri Benedictus van Raalte (1881 - 1929)

Condition:

In good condition.

Technique:

Etching signed in pencil and numbered.

Image Size: 

177mm 
x 172mm
AUTHENTICITY
A Group of Trees. - Vintage Print from 1925

Guaranteed Vintage Item
dated:

1925

Description:

Fine etching printed in sepia numbered 15 of 35 and signed in pencil lower right .

Biography:

Henri Benedictus Van Raalte (1881-1929)

Etcher born in London and educated at the City of London School, St John’s Wood Art Schools and the Royal Academy of Arts schools. He became an associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers, and exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

Henri migrated with his brother to Western Australia in 1910 and married Katherine Lyell Symers in 1912. As a timber-getter he enjoyed ‘bush art-wandering’: in his eyes the tuart trees symbolized the grandeur of his adopted landscape and few of his Australian etchings treated the human figure as central. His first major gum tree etching, ‘The Monarch’ (1918), shown at the Royal Academy in 1920, realized a record price in Australia (£45) and his work was praised by (Sir) Lionel Lindsay in Art in Australia (1918).

In 1914 Van Raalte had settled in Perth where, he claimed, ‘Art was dead’. He worked in a department store before teaching at several schools; his private classes grew into the Perth School of Art by 1920. In 1916, when Perth’s citizens had given him a printing press, his art appeared in the Westralia Gift Book. He held a successful, one-man exhibition in 1919. Sending work to the Melbourne dealer W. H. Gill, he remarked: ‘Some of the stuff is good, some isn’t. I like it all because I did it. I regret I didn’t do it all better!’ It sold well. Van Raalte was a founder (1920) of the Australian Painter-Etchers’ and Graphic Art Society. Considered a pioneer of Australian etching, he specialized in aquatint and drypoint.

Following Gustave Barnes’s death, in 1922 Van Raalte went to Adelaide to become the curator at the Art Gallery of South Australia. His manner was volatile and outspoken, but the Advertiser also found him ‘unaffected, courteous and a capital raconteur‘. He developed and catalogued the large print collection. A council-member of the South Australian Society of Arts, he was president of its offshoot, the Sketch Club, which he helped to found.

His work is in most State galleries, the National Gallery of Australia, the British Museum and in many private collections.

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