
The right eyelid has been strengthened with drypoint. There are two surviving variant impressions of this state.
- Catalogue Number
- E.072
- Title and Date
- DM (David Malouf) 1993
- Description of Featured Image
- A frontal portrait showing the head of the novelist and poet David Malouf, who is wearing spectacles. This is an impression of the fourth and final state of the etching; only minor adjustments were made to the plate in the second and third states.
- Where Made
- Dunmoochin, Cottles Bridge
- Medium Category and Technique
- Intaglio Print: Etching and drypoint on copper
- Support
- Wove paper. Identified papers: Arches paper with watermark: ‘ARCHES / FRANCE’ with infinity symbol.
- Dimensions
-
Image size: 205 x 156 mm
Matrix size: 207 x 159 mm - Artist’s Record Number
- RAE.67
- Printer(s) and Workshop(s)
- All impressions printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio, Cottles Bridge.
- Summary Edition Information
- Four states. No edition.
- Exhibitions
- National Portrait Gallery 2014–15: National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, Rick Amor: 21 Portraits, 28 November 2014 – 1 March 2015 [no catalogue]; online documentation: http://www.portrait.gov.au/exhibitions/rick-amor-2014.
- Collections
- State Library of Victoria, Melbourne: two state impressions, numbered 2 and 3.
- National Portrait Gallery, Canberra: one state impression, numbered 1 (2005.11).
- University of Melbourne Art Collection: AP III (1996.0008.000.000).
- Comment
This is the third of five portrait prints of Australian writers that in 1992 Amor was commissioned to make for the literary journal Overland. David Malouf (b. 1934) is one of Australia’s foremost writers of fiction and nonfiction, and of poetry. He has been awarded many major Australian and international honours, including the International Dublin Literary Award (1996) and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (2000). In 1993, the year in which Amor etched his portrait, Malouf was fifty-nine years old and his most recent novel was Remembering Babylon, a work that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
This portrait of Malouf is the first of two executed by Amor; it is based on a drawing made from television, although Amor no longer recalls the name of the program in which Malouf appeared, or when it went to air. The drawing has not survived; however, judging by the linear nature of the etching, it must have been a straightforward line drawing.
Although E.072 was taken through four states, the changes that Amor made in each state were minor ones, and only the final state is therefore illustrated here.
Amor’s other portrait of David Malouf is a painting, done from life in 2012. It was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, following Malouf’s selection of Amor as the artist he wished to paint him.
Amor’s other subjects for the 1992 Overland commission were Helen Garner (cat. no. E.068), Barry Hill (E.070), Chris Wallace-Crabbe (E.080) and Barrett (Barrie) Reid (E.081).
- Keywords
- Barrett Reid, David Malouf, Overland (journal), Portrait
- URL
- https://catalogue.rickamor.com.au/works/intaglio/d-m-david-malouf/
Record last updated 15/02/2021