David Alexander previews the London Original Print Fair

Apollo, April, 2004 by David Alexander

Although interest in prints has increased enormously in recent years --witness the series of remarkable exhibitions at the British Museum and the success of Print Quarterly, the scholarly journal established in London in 1984--it has paradoxically become more difficult to see fine prints outside museum print rooms or the sale rooms. Some of the most famous print shops in London, notably Colnaghi and Craddock & Bamard, have closed their doors, and many dealers now trade from their homes rather than from shops. Although some dealers show examples of their stock on websites, this form of looking is no substitute for seeing actual prints.

The annual London Original Print Fair is therefore increasingly valuable as a way in which collectors and dealers can get to know each other and as an opportunity to see and handle prints. Time Fair has been held at the Royal Academy since it was started in 1986; this year it is in the Academy's new exhibition space in Burlington Gardens, directly behind Burlington House. As usual there is a loan exhibition from an institution: this time the Ashmolean is showing some of the magnificent early Northern engravings bequeathed to the University of Oxford in 1834 by Francis Douce, who collected principally because of his interest in imagery, for example, of witchcraft and the exotic. These have been selected by the Museum's print specialist Christian Rumelin.

The change of venue has enabled a larger number of exhibitors to take part, most of the thirty-plus dealers (of whom half have websites) are based in Britain, but there are also dealers from France, Germany, Italy and the United States. Among the newcomers this year is the Paris firm of A. & D. Martinez, who offer a wide range of prints (www.martinezestamples.com). The most notable feature of this year's group is the variety of their stock and of their trading philosophies. Of course there are many fine examples of sought-after Old Master prints. One can find Rembrandts or renaissance prints with the long established firm of C.G. Boemer (www.cgboerner.com), who have a group of The triumphs of Julius Caesar by Andrea Andreani (3558-1629) after his fellow Mantuan Andrea Mantegna, and with Helmut Rumbler, one of Germany's leading dealers, who makes a welcome return to the Fair after a gap of a few years. Old prints are, however, not necessarily expensive and potential visitors should not think that all the prints at the fair are beyond the average pocket. There are still certain types of prints, notably portraits, which are still modestly priced, partly because relatively few people know anything about the sitters. Sanders of Oxford, (www.co.uk/antiques/ sanders.html) have selections of portrait prints, including fine mezzotints, as well as of British architectural and topgraphical prints and ones of Russian interest. The portrait print tends to be treated as an inferior genre because so many are reproductive prints. There are, however, some very fine portraits which are designed and engraved by the same hand. In the seventeenth century there were a number of very accomplished portrait engravers who worked after their own drawings. The most famous was Robert Nanteuil (1623-78), whose prints are very undervalued. Many were portraits of forgotten clerics which were used as the headings of academic theses, but Nanteuil also produced portraits of most of the leading personalities of the day. Christopher Mendez has a fine impression of the largest of the eleven plates he engraved of Louis XIV (Fig. 2). Mr Mendez is known for his partiality to unusual prints and was the first to draw the attention of British collectors to the prints by C.W. Kolbe (1757-1835) of exotic vegetation, of which he has a fine example on show this year.

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German printmaking, particularly that of the early nineteenth century, attracted some remarkable talents, and Emanuel von Baeyer (www.evbaeyer.com), a young German dealer based in London, has assembled a fascinating group of such prints. At last year's Fair the British Museum purchased from him the rare Fuseli, Lavater and Hess visiting Spalding at Barth 1763, after Fuseli. This was paid for by friends and colleagues in memory of Richard Godfrey, whose last achievement as a print scholar was the Tate Gallery exhibition on the English caricaturist James Gillray. Since then fine examples of Gillray's work have made increasingly large sums at auction. The dealer at the Fair who specialises in caricatures is Andrew Edmunds (www.andrewedmunds.com); the most interesting group of prints which he has this year is undoubtedly the collection of some six hundred English caricatures bought in 1829 by Louis-Philippe, who was himself to prove an easy target for French caricaturists after he became King.

Among the exhibitors are several who pioneered the revival of interest in neglected nineteenth- and early twentieth-century prints: William Weston (www.williamweston.co.uk), Hilary Gerrish, formerly of Lott & Gerrish, who is now on his own, as is Robin Garton (www.gartonandco.com); the latter, who has published many useful reference books, was formerly in partnership with Gordon Cooke, who has put in a great deal of work as Chairman of the Fair and who now runs the print side of the Fine Art Society (www.artnet.com/fineartsociety). The Society is offering a good selection of twentieth-century British prints, for example by Robert Bevan, whose work appeared in remarkably small editions (Fig. 1). Other dealers with similar British material include Elizabeth Harvey-Lee and the Redfern Gallery; Austin/Desmond (www.austindesmond. com), have one of the lithographs by Leon Kossoff shown at the Diploma show when he was a student at the Royal College of Art in 1954, while Gordon Samuel has put together a selection of prints of London. In addition there are examples of the work of some of the most famous printmakers of the last century. Fred Mulder has some outstanding prints by Picasso, including his 1952 lithograph Femme a la fenetre (Block 695) and Kandinsky's Etching 1916 No. 2. There are of course many contemporary prints on show, ranging from the landscapes of Norman Ackroyd, RA, who has been a great supporter of the Fair, to the most recent work of Damien Hirst: his spot etchings have been published by Charles Booth-Clibborn's Paragon Press, which has also published a set of woodcuts by Terry Frost RA.