Publisher/Manufacturer: St George's Gallery Prints, 7 Cork St. London Series title: Rhondda Suite (plate 5)
1960 Etching with aquatint in black, with hand colour, on white Hodgkinson handmade Waterleaf paper
554 x 400 mm. Purchase: The artist 1987 Funding support: Catherine Lewis and V & A
Artist's proof. Printed in an edition of 50, plus 5 artist's proofs. Steel-faced zinc plate still extant. The 'Rhondda Suite', a set of 7 etchings, was commissioned by Robert Erskine and published on 03/08/1960. The original set was printed by John Brunsdon at the Etching Studio in Welwyn Garden City. The prints were published both as a portfolio set, numbered 1 to 10, or as individual prints, numbered 11 to 50. 'Across the Valley' was individually priced at 8 guineas in the 1960 exhibition at St George's Gallery Prints. This particular print was printed by Gareth Jones during the 1980s. See PR1522 and PR1523 for the title and contents pages
Townscape / street scene at Pentre, Rhondda; foreground, a pavement, a woman steps into a road, a lamp post and the side of a house, in silhouette, with a chimney and a television aerial; middleground, rows of terraced houses, a parked car, two pedestrians, slag heeps? and sheets hanging on a washing line; background, a hill. Dust-ground aquatint used for dark areas of houses. Vigorous hatching is used elsewhere for tone. Some scraping and burnished highlights. Textured fabric has been pressed on to the ground on the plate for areas of the foreground. All areas below the horizon are hand coloured with water-based brown ink applied by a large soft brush
