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Details
- Date
- (1934)
- Media category
- Materials used
- wood engraving, printed in black ink on cream Japanese (kozo) paper
- Edition
- 7/50
- Dimensions
- 20.5 x 17.9 cm blockmark; 26.8 x 22.1 cm sheet
- Signature & date
Signed l.r., pencil "Adrian Feint". Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased 1987
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 468.1987
- Copyright
- © Estate of Adrian Feint
- Artist information
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Adrian Feint
Works in the collection
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About
Adrian Feint was an illustrator, designer, printmaker and painter whose reputation was first established through his graphic work. He was a skilled book and magazine illustrator, creating covers for 'Art in Australia' and the 'Home' among other publications, and produced a significant oeuvre of bookplates, for which he became internationally known, with a well-received exhibition of them held at the Library of Congress, Washington in 1930. Feint made etchings in the early 1920s but later became more interested in woodcuts and wood engravings, the first of which he exhibited in 1927 while a student of design with Thea Proctor.
Feint made two versions of 'The goddess and the aspidistra', in which decorative domestic objects have been arranged in an elegant and witty montage; the Gallery has the key and colour woodblocks for another version that is slightly larger in size, with subtle differences in imagery, such as the cloud forms in the sky. The print echoes the self-consciously tasteful imagery of Proctor's eclectic still life compositions, although it was made several years after they quarrelled, and may be a pointed comment on her work, rather than an affectionate homage.
from Anne Ryan, 'Australian etchings and engravings 1880s–1930s from the Gallery's collection', AGNSW, Sydney 2007
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Exhibition history
Shown in 4 exhibitions
Heaven on Earth: Visions of Arcadia, Hazelhurst Arts Centre, , 01 Oct 2005–27 Nov 2005
Professor Sadler, Japan and Australian modernism, University Art Gallery, University of Sydney, Sydney, 03 Apr 2011–24 Jul 2011
Sydney Moderns, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 06 Jul 2013–07 Oct 2013
Modern impressions; Australian prints from the collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 02 Sep 2016–Jan 2017
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Bibliography
Referenced in 4 publications
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Deborah Edwards, Sydney moderns: art for a new world, 'Frank Weitzel: tableau of the modern city', pg. 164-169, Sydney, 2013, 168 (illus.), 317, 324.
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Grahame Kime., Heaven on earth: Visions of arcadia, 'Visions of Arcadia', Gymea, 2005. List of works; not paginated
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Anne Ryan, Australian etchings and engravings 1880s–1930s from the Gallery's collection, Sydney, 2007, 76 (colour illus.). cat.no. 114
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Maria (Connie) Tornatore-Loong, Japan in Sydney: Professor Sadler & modernism, 1920-30s, 'Case study two: Paul Haefliger and the art of Japan', pg. 113-119, Sydney, 2011, 136. cat.no. 23
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