Publisher/Manufacturer: St George's Gallery Prints, 7 Cork St. London Series title: Rhondda Suite (plate 3)
1960 Etching with aquatint in black, with hand colour, on white Hodgkinson handmade Waterleaf paper
506 x 496 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. 'Pigeon Houses' was individually priced at 10 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. Drawn directly onto the plate in situ near the Lewis-Merthyr Colliery
Townscape / street scene with pigeon houses / huts at Trehafod, Rhondda; foreground, two women walking on a street one of whom carries a box; middleground, trees, a wall, sheds, a gate, a telegraph pole and a pigeon fancier at the open door of a pigeon loft; background, an embankment topped with rows of terraced houses with chimneys, gardens and television aerials. Dust-ground aquatint used for the dark walls of the sheds and terraced houses. Vigorous hatching is used elsewhere for tone. Some scraping and burnished highlights. All areas below the horizon are hand coloured with water-based brown ink applied by a large soft brush
