Publisher/Manufacturer: St George's Gallery Prints, 7 Cork St. London Series title: Rhondda Suite (plate 6)
1960 Etching with aquatint in black, with hand colour, on white Hodgkinson handmade Waterleaf paper
400 x 504 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. 'Old Men at Gossip' 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 at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. See PR1522 and PR1523 for the title and contents pages. Drawn directly onto the plate in situ, in Porth at the bottom of Trebannog Hill
Townscape / street scene at Porth, Rhondda; foreground, a wall with a raised pavement, a girl walking down the centre of a road and threemen conversing whilst seated on a public bench; middleground, a telegraph pole, rows of terraced houses, railings children in a playground with a slide, television aerials and a detatched house with two dormer windows;background, a flat topped hill. Dust-ground aquatint used for dark areas. Vigorous hatching is used elsewhere for tone. Burnished highlights. Textured fabric has been pressed on to the ground on the plate. All areas below the horizon are hand coloured with water-based brown ink applied by a large soft brush
