Etching. An inner-suburban street scene at night, with nineteenth-century terrace houses surrounded by shrubbery on the left and bare trees in the right foreground. At the lower left is a walking figure. There is a crescent moon in the sky and, to its right, street lamps that cast a pool of light onto the road. The scene is etched with loose cross-hatching and is comparatively light in appearance.
Several light areas along the fences at left have been darkened with etching, as has a light patch directly in front of the figure. The aureoles of light emanating from the street lamps have been burnished, as has the area directly beneath the moon.
Horizontal hatching has been added to the fence pillar at the lower left.
- Catalogue Number
- E.134
- Title and Date
- Street at night 2006
- Description of Featured Image
- An inner-suburban street scene at night, with nineteenth-century terrace houses surrounded by shrubbery on the left and bare trees in the right foreground. At the lower left is a walking figure. There is a crescent moon in the sky and, to its right, street lamps that cast a dim pool of light onto the road.
- Where Made
- Alphington, Melbourne
- Medium Category and Technique
- Intaglio Print: Etching and burnishing on copper
- Support
- Wove paper. Identified papers: Magnani paper with watermark: Romanesque ‘M’ with cross above; BFK Rives paper with watermark: ‘BFK RIVES / FRANCE’ with infinity symbol; Velin Arches paper with watermark: ‘ARCHES / FRANCE’ with infinity symbol.
- Dimensions
-
Image size: 190 x 266 mm
Matrix size: 193 x 268 mm - Artist’s Record Number
- RAE.159
- Printer(s) and Workshop(s)
- States I through IV printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. State V printed by Amor in the Alphington studio (V.a, V.b and V.c) and by Rosalind Atkins at the Australian Print Workshop, Fitzroy (Melbourne) (V.d). Edition printed by Rosalind Atkins at the APW.
- Summary Edition Information
- Five states. Edition of ten numbered impressions, 2006.
- Literature
- Gavin Fry, Rick Amor, Beagle Press, Roseville, NSW, 2008, p. 206 (ed. 2/10). For illustrations of related works, see The street at night, 2001, oil on canvas, p. 213; The street at night, 2004, charcoal, p. 14 and frontispiece.
- Collections
- State Library of Victoria, Melbourne: four state impressions, numbered 1-1 through 1-4; ed. 2/10.
- National Gallery of Australia, Canberra: ed. 1/10, with plate tone (2008.914).
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne: AP II (2012.420).
- Comment
This etching is based closely on a charcoal drawing from 2004 (Fry 2008), which, in turn, was based on a freely painted oil, The street at night, 2001 (Fry 2008). The view depicted in E.134 is typical of parts of inner-suburban Melbourne, with its streets of intact nineteenth-century terrace houses, but it is a view that does not exist precisely like this in reality. Combined in Amor’s image are details from his photographs of such terrace houses in the suburb of Carlton, while the trees are based on those found in one of Carlton’s many late nineteenth-century garden squares.
The densely worked hatching of the print reflects the technique used by Amor in his charcoal drawing of 2004, which he executed in the manner of Seurat’s tonal drawings, a graphic style that had been adapted by one of Amor’s teachers at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, John Brack (1920–1999), in some of his early works. Amor acknowledges that he was probably also influenced, subconsciously, by the paintings of John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836–1893), an English painter who specialized in moonlit townscapes; this connection is most apparent in the hand-coloured version of E.134 (V.d).
The subject of the etching was, from the beginning, a nocturnal one, but Amor built up the image from a comparatively light first state. Working in this way enabled him to carefully calibrate the dark tones through the next four states, while in the fifth and final state he also used plate tone when printing.
- Keywords
- Carlton (Melbourne), Inner suburb, John Atkinson Grimshaw, John Brack, Night scene, Streetscape
- URL
- https://catalogue.rickamor.com.au/works/intaglio/street-at-night/
Record last updated 16/02/2021