Stanley Roy Badmin

The technically brilliant etchings of Stanley Badmin, student and protégé of R.S. Austin, won immediate critical acclaim and financial success upon his introduction to the Twenty-One Gallery in 1928. However, his outstanding career in this field was to be cut short by the decline in the etching market after the depression, and in 1936 he forsook etching in favour of the financial rewards of watercolour illustration. S.R. Badmin produced 40 recorded plates during his brief but remarkable career as an etcher, each worked in his own distinctive and carefully wrought style.

Stanley R. Badmin's etchings were produced using a carefully planned method, quite unique to his work, in which the image is drawn in stages. Badmin would draw the part which he intended to print darkest first, and would immerse the plate in acid with only this small part of the image prepared. After this area had been bitten sufficiently, he would remove the plate from the acid and draw in the area intended to be next darkest. The plate would be immersed in stages, with the drawing progressing in this manner at each stage. This method is in complete contrast with the traditional practice of making the whole drawing at once and subsequently stopping out the lighter areas as each is bitten sufficiently. Stanley Badmin's method avoided the time-consuming process of stopping out whilst allowing him to create an image of the finest detail with the most subtle tonal variations. [more]