Jacques Beltrand’s chiaroscuro woodcut portrait of Beethoven, c1910

Jacques Beltrand (aka Jacques Anthony Louis Beltrand) (1874–1977)

”Ludwig van Beethoven”, c1910

Chiaroscuro woodcut, printed in two shades of grey-blue on fine Japanese paper, hand-signed in pencil by the artist and numbered “40/40”

Size: (irregularly cut sheet) 18 x 13.6 cm; (plate) 14 x 9.7 cm; (image borderline including the text tablet) 11.5 x 7.4 cm

Lettered in two lines “LVDWIG.VAN.BEETHOVEN /M.D.CC.LXX-M.D.CCC.XX.VII”

Condition: a faultless impression in near pristine condition hand-signed in pencil and numbered “40” in an edition of 40 impressions.

I am selling this small woodcut masterpiece for AU$110 (currently US$87.02/EUR75.67/GBP67.22 at the time of this listing) including postage and handling to anywhere in the world.

If you are interested in purchasing this perfectly preserved hand-signed print, please contact me (oz_jim@printsandprinciples.com) and I will send you a PayPal invoice to make the payment easy.

This print has been sold

This is the second woodcut by Beltrand that I have featured and like the previous print (see http://www.printsandprinciples.com/2017/03/jacques-beltrands-chiaroscuro-woodcut.html), this portrait of Beethoven—moulded from his plaster cast death mask—is a remarkably strong image.

One feature of it that I wish to point out is that sometimes prints look better in reality than they do in reproduction. This is certainly the case here. When seen “in the flesh”, the colours may be the same two shades of grey-blue as can be reproduced digitally, but what is not seen in reproduction is the delicacy of the print surface and how the printed colour has a different tactile appeal—a slightly waxy appearance—compared to the dry surface of the paper. Going further, the colour in the physical print is almost opaque, but not quite, and it is this note of translucence that is not seen in reproduction and which makes the actual print so special.