La Noyée (Drowned Woman) by Stanley William Hayter

La Noyée (Drowned Woman) by Stanley William Hayter

La Noyée (Drowned Woman)

Stanley William Hayter

Title

La Noyée (Drowned Woman)

 
Artist
Year
1955  
Technique
color engraving, soft-ground etching and scorper; black: intaglio; orange: stencil-plate; offset-ste 
Image Size
15 1/4 x 19" platemark 
Signature
lower right, pencil 
Edition Size
12/175 plus 20 A/Ps, 11 state proofs and 7 color trial proofs. 
Annotations
titled, editioned and dated in pencil 
Reference
B/M 222 iv/iv. 
Paper
cream BFK Rives 
State
4 of 4; published 
Publisher
L'OEuvre Gravée (chop, lower left) 
Inventory ID
22800 
Price
SOLD
Description

S.W. Hayter re-visited a theme he first attempted in a collaborative print done with Joseph Hecht in 1946 - "La Noyée" - which was done in black and white just using engraving (B&M 173).

Hayter pulled out all the stops to achieve the experimental results he was seeking for "La Noyée", utelizing color engraving, soft-ground etching and scorper; printing the black using intaglio, the orange using a stencil-plate, the green using an offset-stencil-plate, and the violet with a soft roller. He used the soft-ground and fabric to add a net-like texture to the figure and the scorper to gouge out a sinuous white line - the overall effect that of a fishing net with an entrapped figure.

On page 25 in the preface of the catalogue raisonné Desirée Moorhead Hayter states: "La noyée from 1955, a striking and sombre print, combines the imagery of the 1940s with the successful colour experimentation of the 1950s; the bold and flowing treatment of the looped white lines is particularly successful".

There is a light water tide line in the far left margin, well away from image.