
Etching. A frontal portrait of Chris Wallace-Crabbe, showing the head and part of the shoulders. The subject is lightly etched, and the image has been touched extensively with pencil.
The pencilled amendments made in the first state have been carried here and appear in the hair, eyebrows, eyelids, nose, cheeks, ears and collar. The background at the level of the ears has been loosely etched, and three small oblique strokes have been added deep in the lower left corner. There are four variant impressions of this state.
- Catalogue Number
- E.080
- Title and Date
- Poet 1993
- Description of Featured Image
- A frontal portrait of the poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe, showing the head and part of the shoulders.
- Where Made
- Dunmoochin, Cottles Bridge
- Medium Category and Technique
- Intaglio Print: Etching on copper
- Support
- Wove paper. Identified papers: No papers identified.
- Dimensions
-
Image size: 301 x 200 mm
Matrix size: 301 x 201 mm - Artist’s Record Number
- RAE.76
- Printer(s) and Workshop(s)
- All impressions printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio, Cottles Bridge.
- Summary Edition Information
- Two states. No edition.
- Collections
- State Library of Victoria, Melbourne: one state impression, numbered 1; AP IV.
- Comment
This is the fourth of five portrait prints of Australian writers that in 1992 Amor was commissioned to make for the literary journal Overland.
Chris Wallace-Crabbe (b. 1934) is a poet, literary and visual arts critic, and founding director, and now Professor Emeritus, of the Australian Centre, University of Melbourne. Wallace-Crabbe and Amor have known each other since the 1980s. This etched portrait was drawn directly onto the copper plate, at Wallace-Crabbe’s home in Carlton (Melbourne), when Wallace-Crabbe was fifty-nine years old.
Although commissioned for Overland, the portrait was never reproduced there, because Amor was unhappy with his likeness of his subject and did not wish to take the etching beyond its initial two states.
Amor’s other subjects for the 1992 Overland commission were Helen Garner (cat. no. E.068), Barry Hill (E.070), David Malouf (E.072) and Barrett Reid (E.081).
- Keywords
- Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Portrait
- URL
- https://catalogue.rickamor.com.au/works/intaglio/poet/
Record last updated 04/08/2017