Author: Oswald Birley (Engraved by Lawrence Josset)
Publisher: The Times Publishing Company
Edition: Limited Edition.
Size: (18 x 24 inches)
Place published: London
Year: 1946
Superb full-color mezzotint reproduction of Oswald Birley's famous 1946 painting of a seated Winston Churchill, produced by and for The Times Publishing Company. Print (18 x 24 inches) is in very good condition and is here matted and gorgeously framed in cherry wood (26 x 35 inches overall). Oswald Birley was a celebrated portrait artist who, in 1925, was one of three judges (along with Sir Joseph Duveen and Kenneth Clark) who awarded Churchill first prize in an amateur art exhibition held in London. Twenty years later, Birley was commissioned by the House of Commons to paint Churchill's portrait for his Residence in the Palace of Westminster. Sittings were held in the painting studio at Chartwell throughout 1946. Though at first reticent, Churchill soon warmed to Birley, who went on to become a Churchill intimate and a Chartwell regular. This print is signed in pencil below the image by the engraver: "Lawrence Josset" (1910-1995) who, according to his obituary in The Independent, "was... a magnificent anachronism. Like his great 18th- and 19th-century predecessors, Valentine Green and Samuel Cousins for instance, he made his living as a reproductive mezzotint engraver. He, like his artistic forebears, used this most demanding of techniques to reproduce original paintings with astounding faithfulness; but, while the engravers of earlier times had no alternative, Josset furthered the great tradition of reproductive engraving in an age when the camera had all but eclipsed the craft. A mezzotint engraver proceeds by patiently and systematically texturing the surface of a copper plate with a serrated device and then scraping and polishing the textured surface to various degrees of smoothness in order to achieve the image. The plate is then inked by hand and printed in a rolling-press. Perhaps Josset's most celebrated work is the mezzotint reproduction of Pietro Annigoni's portrait of the Queen, published by the Times Publishing Company in 1957 and hand-printed in colour by the old-established firm Thomas Ross & Son. It is estimated that the plate was the result of six months' labour and that the arduous process of inking and printing in colour meant that only two impressions could be made in a day. Josset studied at Bromley School of Art and subsequently in the School of Engraving at the Royal College of Art, where he was taught by Robert Austin and Malcolm Osborne. He also worked for a year at Waterlow's, the banknote engravers. After a brief spell of teaching, he embarked on what was to be a freelance career spanning more than 60 years."