Sidney Place

Augusta Payne Rathbone

This striking, Modernist color aquatint with etched defining lines was done at Sidney Place in Brooklyn Heights, New York.

Rathbone's composition is a view from an upper story window looking out at the roofs and chimneys of the brick buildings next door and down the street. The steeple of Emanuel Protestant Episcopal Church rises in the background.

While in Paris in 1927, Augusta Rathbone was introduced to printmaking and thereafter worked primarily in color aquatint combined with line etching. Rathbone, who had studied briefly with Bonnard, uses a freely drawn black etched line to capture rough shapes which are then filled with color, using aquatint. She worked with Monsieur Porcabeuf, a professional printer in Paris, who would prove her prepared plates. In the 1940s she began to print her own plates in small editions.

This aquatint is done using a rust colored ink which captures the brick color of the buildings along Sidney Place. The active sky reflects the same colors, perhaps the result of sunset.