Drypoint. Portrait of Robert Harris, showing his head and neck; he looks to the right. The pupil area of the eye on the left is blank. The background is summarily scored with vertical strokes.
The face has now been worked up in drypoint: wrinkles have been added to the forehead; the left eye has been completed, and its pupil added; the cheeks have been modelled with additional drypoint strokes; and the lower lip has been darkened with hatching. Several oblique strokes have been added to the right shoulder. The background has been darkened with more drypoint.
- Catalogue Number
- E.074
- Title and Date
- RH (Robert Harris) 1993
- Description of Featured Image
- Portrait of the poet Robert Harris, showing his head and neck; he looks to the right. The background is closely hatched with downward strokes of drypoint.
- Where Made
- Dunmoochin, Cottles Bridge
- Medium Category and Technique
- Intaglio Print: Drypoint on copper
- Support
- Wove paper. Identified papers: No papers identified.
- Dimensions
-
Image size: 158 x 125 mm
Matrix size: 159 x 129 mm - Artist’s Record Number
- RAE.69
- Printer(s) and Workshop(s)
- All impressions printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio, Cottles Bridge.
- Summary Edition Information
- Three states. No edition.
- Literature
- Robert Harris, ‘Robert Harris 1951–1993: Autobiographical Notes’, Overland, no. 131, 1993, pp. 4–6, illus. p. 4 (state III).
- Collections
- State Library of Victoria, Melbourne: two state impressions, numbered 1 and 2.
- University of Melbourne Art Collection: AP III (1996.0013).
- Comment
This portrait of the poet, teacher and literary editor, and sometime labourer and hearse driver, Robert Harris (1951–1993) was commissioned for the literary journal Overland by its editor, Barrett Reid, following Harris’s sudden death in 1993 in Sydney.
Amor and Harris knew one another from their involvement with Overland, where Harris had been on the editorial committee, and the journal’s poetry editor, for some time.
Amor based his drypoint portrait of Harris on a photograph (now lost) given to him by Barrett Reid. The print appeared in Overland together with autobiographical notes by Harris, published in his memory (Harris 1993).
- Keywords
- Barrett Reid, Overland (journal), Portrait, Robert Harris
- URL
- https://catalogue.rickamor.com.au/works/intaglio/rh-robert-harris/
Record last updated 15/02/2021