Published circa 1915-1921. Second state -see below.
Image size:13 x 9 3/4" (328 x 245mm)
Sheet size: 17 x 125/8" (323 x 433mm)
Printed on ivory - cream laid paper, the item is in good condition throughout. It is signed in pencil R. Ray-Jones at bottom right. The paper bears a 'Fortune' watermark - see image. There is overall a slight time-staining, especially evident in the close margins of the image itself where a previous card mount has left its mark; this could, no doubt, be expertly remedied. There are remnants of two paper hinges at top left and right.
This piece is probably the most well-known of Ray-Jones' work, and likewise considered to be one of the great masterworks of the British Etching Revival. It is made after a chalk self-portrait drawing of 1910, though the exact date of the etching is uncertain. This second state with an edition of forty was created after the first was damaged by accident during printing.according to Elizabeth Harvey Lee: "Frank Short dropped the plate when only three impressions had been printed (c1915?). To repair the damage the plate was cut down for printing the edition of 40." https://www.elizabethharvey-lee.com/home_selections/063_homeselect_2020.htm#03. When the print was exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in 1922 it was hailed with critical acclaim as “one of the finest etched portraits of contemporary times” and the entire edition sold out on the first day.
Ray-Jones was a most meticulous artist and etcher - as the exquisite hatching and cross-hatching in this piece clearly demonstrates. However, so concerned with detail and accuracy was he that his body of work was small and therefore rarely come on to the market.
Raymond Ray-Jones (born, 1886, Ashton under Lyne; died, Carbis Bay, Cornwall, 1942) attended the Royal College of Art (1907), and later the Academy Julien, Paris (1911) where he was awarded the Grand Prix and Medal for portrait painting. He became an Associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1914 and was subsequently made a Fellow in 1926. He served as a clerk (or, maybe, ostler), in the Royal Horse Artillery during the First World War. Post-war he married and lived first in rural Essex before moving in the mid-thirties to a new home near Carbis Bay in west Cornwall. The outbreak of the Second World War particularly depressed his spirits as it put an end his visits to France and Italy, countries he loved and where he most often found his artistic inspiration. This, along with financial worries, led to depression. Ray-Jones took his own life in 1942.
