Title

Foreword: Oil Drawings [monotypes] by Rupert Bunny.

Author

Fine Art Society Galleries

Source

Oil Drawings [monotypes] by Rupert Bunny. London: Fine Art Society Galleries, 1898.

Publication date

1898

Type

Exhibition catalogue essay

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

Oil drawings by Rupert Bunny.

The small series of pictures which are called ‘oil drawings’ for want of a better name, are the results of lengthy experiments which have been carried out by Mr Bunny, in a method of which he does not claim to be the inventor, but which he considers has been carried further by him than by any others working in the same field.

The method is at first sight a simple one, consisting as it does merely in painting a picture in oil colours upon a copper plate and taking off the impression upon plate paper. But in reality the difficulties arising out of the selection and mixing of fitting colours, and in painting upon a surface which in no way resembles in colour that upon which the painting will find itself, are by no means few, and have prevented others from embarking upon it save in monochrome. These difficulties are not lessened by the fact that retouching after printing is a very hazardous matter.

It may be asked wherein lies the advantage of the process. It may be summed up thus: in the first place, the results, unlike colour-printing, is individual. There being no intermediary between the artist and the finished production. In the next place, the impression is ‘unique’, there can be no duplication, the painting being completely transferred by the process of printing, and the owner of any print has what is as much a painting as if it had been executed upon the paper itself. Lastly, the result is a work which the artist feels has certain qualities of freshness and directness which are not to be found in either oil or water-colour painting, and which, therefore, renders the process worthy of even further consideration and trial than the lengthy period which he has bestowed upon it to bring it to its present condition.
Published by Fine Art Society Galleries, London, 1898.

© Australianprints, 2004.