E.120 Afternoon 1999; reworked 2002

• I. 1st state of 3, 1999

  Destroyed by the artist.

• II. 2nd state of 3, 1999

  

  Etching and burnishing. A street view with a car and a telegraph pole, and with shops on the right. A dwarf woman carrying a shopping basket walks past a shop in whose window can be glimpsed a seated man in back view. In the left background is a steep treed rise. The branches of a tall cypress cover much of the sky. The plate has been burnished in places, including the light that streams through the doorway, and the car windows. This is the first surviving state of this print; it is complete in all details and tonally resolved.

  Impression on wove paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘2 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Afternoon’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R. Amor 99’.

• III. 3rd and final state, 2002 (Featured Image)

  

  On 6 May 2002 Amor reworked the plate, adding drypoint in many places, including on the cypress. The drypoint additions are most prominent on the figure of the woman and in the darkest shadows of the shops. The farthest shop window now has a pronounced vertical division.

  Selectively wiped impression with light plate tone on the right half of the plate, wiped clean on the steep rise at left, on wove paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘1-3’; lower centre: ‘Afternoon’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R. Amor 99’.

• No edition

• Comment

  The subject here is based on a memory from Amor’s early life, when he was living in the seaside suburb of Frankston. Depicted in the etching is a dwarf woman, who lived in the area and was often seen around the shopping district. Amor has recalled that she was part of Melbourne’s bohemian and folk scene in the 1960s.

  The subject of E.120 first appeared in Amor’s work in a highly finished conté crayon drawing, Study for oil painting ‘Afternoon’, dated 10 June 1999 (National Gallery of Australia, inv. no. 2000.622) (Niagara Galleries 2000). This drawing was followed by a small oil study (Fry 2008) and a painting (Niagara Galleries 2000).

  The inscription on the second state of the etching, together with its level of tonal resolution, indicates that it is likely to have been preceded by an earlier state. Amor has confirmed that this is the case, and that he destroyed the first state. He was dissatisfied in general with this print, because he considered the woman’s positioning to be wrong, and he decided not to edition it. Only two impressions of the work survive.

  The artist returned to the subject more than a decade later, in a lithograph printed in 2012.

  The verso of the copper plate used for E.120 was later used for the drypoint Standing nude, 2003, reworked 2006 and 2009 (cat. no. E.128).