Wilfred Fairclough

1907 – 1996

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Covent Garden, Grand Tier 1957

Original etching.

Very good signed proof impression with strong, heavily inked line. A presentation proof aside from the normal edition, retained by the artist for his own personal use.

£210

Lucerne: Bread and Cheese 1984

Original etching and aquatint.

Excellent signed proof impression from the only edition. Wilfred Fairclough exhibited an impression of this etching at the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1984 and at the Royal Academy in 1985.

SOLD

Venetian II 1972

Original etching.

Excellent signed proof impression from the only edition.

SOLD

Wilfred Fairclough joined the Royal College of Art in 1931, where he excelled as a printmaker, being taught by Robert Sargent Austin, Malcolm Osborne and the visiting professors, Francis Dodd and Henry Rushbury. Wilfred Fairclough was awarded the Prix de Rome for engraving in January 1934 and the resulting stay in Italy made a huge impression on his work. By 1940 he had produced 31 etched works; however, he all but abandoned etching during the first years after the war due to the total lack of demand for prints during this period.

Upon his return to Italy in 1961, Wilfred Fairclough’s interest in etching was inspired afresh and he went on to create over 70 further plates after this date. It is in these later works, that his true individual talent emerged; these are quite distinct from his early works in which his personal style was repressed by the overbearing teaching of R.S. Austin. Upon his retirement from teaching in 1972 Fairclough threw himself back into printmaking with renewed gusto, producing an especially notable series of etchings and aquatints of Venice and Lucerne over the following twenty years. [more]