ARTIST: John Brunsdon (1933-2014) British

TITLE: "St Michaels Mount" 2nd version

SIGNED: In pencil and numbered 42/75

MEDIUM: Etching With Aquatint

SIZE: 81cm x 61cm framed

CONDITION: The margins have browned over the years and there is a water stain (see image) lower left corner. All can be covered up with a fresh new mount which would be around £15-£20 to add in. Frame is original 70's.

DETAIL: A superb early and rare etching by one of our favourite British printmakers, John Brunsdon. It is with great sadness to advise that John died on the 13th April last year 2014 at the age of 80 - a wonderful printmaker - I believe up there with the very best of them and we cherish our personal collection of over 30 of his works collected in the last 10 years.

Born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire on 15 August 1933, son of John Robert Brunsdon (1901-1983), a cobbler, and his wife Rosa Florence Millicent née Little, a silent film piano player, who married at Gloucester in 1930. In 1945 he entered Cheltenham Grammar School and in 1949 enrolled at the Cheltenham College of Art, then under the direction of Stanley Dent, an etcher of some standing and Ken Oliver. He then completed his National Service and in 1955 studied etching at the Royal College of Art for three years having been interviewed and accepted by Robert Austin two years previously, and it was Julian Trevelyan, Head of Etching at the Royal College of Art, who, more than anyone else, provided a vigorous arid fundamental influence, his other teachers included Edwin La-Dell, Alaster Grant, Edward Ardizzone and Edward Bawden. To to supplement his income, he printed other artists plates, including those for Julian Trevelyan, Richard Beer, Gabriel White, George Chapman, Derrick Greaves and others and began selling work to galleries. Brunsdon has never worked directly from nature his method is to draw and photograph the subject and work out ideas in the studio. One of Britain's most distinguished printmakers, an Associate of the Royal College of Art and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers. In 1959 he began teaching portrait painting part-time at St. Albans School of Art and had his first exhibition at the Zwemmer Gallery in 1961 and in 1963 moved to Woburn, Bedfordshire. In 1965 a founder member of the Print Makers Council with Michael Rothenstein, Valerie Thornton and others and, in the same year, had his first one man show at Lund, Sweden, his first one man show in UK was at the Curwen Gallery, London in 1967.

After establishing printmaking at St. Albans School of Art, with assistance from the Principal, Anthony Harris who was teaching full-time, Brunsdon became one of the first artists to join Christie's Contemporary Art. In 1977 he retired from teaching to concentrate on etching, moving to Stradbroke, Suffolk where his time was devoted to his printing studio where all his work was individually hand etched, inked, coloured and printed. He took delight in the texture and decorative qualities of etched marks and the sweeping shapes of broad colour which fuse into timeless images. The landscape of Suffolk and Norfolk now features in his work and in 1983 he moves from Stradbroke to an isolated 16th century Suffolk cottage. He has had major exhibitions at The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (1974), the Alice Simsar Gallery, Ann Abor, Michigan, USA (1975), the Galarie L'Angle Aigue, Brussels (1980) the City churches of St Mary Le Bow and St Catherine Cree, London (1988) the Chapman Gallery, Canberra, Australia and at Heffers Gallery, Cambridge. His commissions included Sea Containers for the Hotel Cipriani; The Council for the Protection of Rural Britain; The National Trust and The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. John's work is represented in the Arts Council, Tate Gallery, The British Council, V&A, MOMA, New York, Scottish Museum of Modern Art and many other public collections. Selected commissions include the National Trust, Council for the Protection of Rural Britain and Illustrated London News and a full member of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers.

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