This is the first time that Australian artist Margaret Preston's printed oeuvre--from her early etchings to her last woodblock prints, including over 400 works in all--has been catalogued in its entirety.  Uncovering a wealth of information about this inventive, prolific artist, who continually strived to create a national art relevant to her time, Butler's study is absorbing and authoritative.

The Prints of Margaret Preston: A Catalogue Raisonné

Arts & Photography

Butler, Roger

Individual Artists

Oxford University Press

This book reveals some of the remarkable colonial works that form the cornerstones of the National Gallery of Australia’s collection of Australian prints.The earliest intaglio prints were produced in New South Wales by a free settler, John Lewin, whose exquisitely hand-colored etchings of moths and birds were published in 1805 and 1808–13. The first views of the colony to be printed locally were published in 1812–14 by an entrepreneurial emancipist and engraved by the convicts assigned to him. From a culture of “making do” in the early decades of the penal settlement, the extent, quality, and scope of print production increased exponentially and kept pace with developments overseas. The backgrounds of the printmakers whose work is discussed varied greatly, with professional trade workers and artists making equally important contributions. By the mid-nineteenth century, printmaking was firmly established in key areas of commercial enterprise, science, architecture, art, advertising, illustrated books, and newspapers. Through the second half of the century printmaking in Australia continued to match developments overseas. One particular high point for wood-engravers was the production of the lavish Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, published between 1886–88, to coincide with the centenary of European settlement. Printed Images in Colonial Australia concludes with the photogravure of Tom Roberts’s painting commissioned to celebrate the federation of the Australian states in 1901.The 377 images reproduced here, many of them exceedingly rare or long overlooked, are presented alongside Roger Butler’s original research and information not previously assembled to give full weight to the important role of the printed image in Australian art and culture.

Printed Images in Colonial Australia, 1801-1901

History & Criticism

National Gallery of Australia

This revised and enlarged edition of The Prints of Margaret Preston includes thirteen new works discovered since the original publication in 1987, and twenty-two works that are reproduced for the first time. Margaret Preston (1875–1963) is one of Australia's most celebrated modernists. In the 1920s and thirties she created exuberant decorative compositions which have remained among the most popular of all Australian artworks. Modern, cosmopolitan, and intensely colored, Preston's woodblock prints and paintings of still-life subjects and the Sydney metropolis particularized a moment of extraordinary innovation in the history of Australian art. Preston was the country's first serious advocate of Aboriginal art; her early appropriation and promotion of Aboriginal imagery to the cause of modernism has contributed to her ongoing significance.

The Prints of Margaret Preston: A Catalogue Raisonne

Natl Gallery of Australia

The prints of Margaret Preston: A catalogue raisonne

This volume follows printmaking through a seventy-year period, from the latter part of the ninteenth century as the print, freed from its reproductive bonds, became a vehicle for pure artistic expression; through the great social and political traumas of the first half of the twentieth century, when the print was co-opted to carry a political message; and concludes in the immediate postwar years with prints that signal the artists' seach for meaning and an awareness of self.

Printed Images by Australian Artists, 1885-1955

Reference

This splendidly illustrated, multi-colored publication serves as a fitting memorial to a much-admired Canberra-based artist, teacher and traveller who died in 2012 while still involved with the production of the book. A painter of the art of colour etching, his keenly observed studies of the world around him - whether in his birthplace, Germany, or in fair-flung and ancient places in the Middle East, Far East and Australia - are rich in detail and often annotated in his own handwriting. He lets the etched line work on the spectator's imagination - with poetic rewards for all who ponder. Schemisser came to Australia in 1978 as head of the Printmaking Department of the Canberra School of Art. As such, he encouraged the development of a generation of young artists. His own works are keenly collected - particularly in Australia, Germany and Jpan. Co-published by SFA Press, Canberra, and Macmillan Art Publishing, this is a heartwarming account of an artistic life well-lived from a variety of scholarly and critical perspectives. The design and colour reproduction are both spectacular.

Jorg Schmeisser: Bilder Der Reise: A man, who likes to draw

Denker, Eric

Haynes, Peter

Gates, Merryn

Joppian, Rudiger

Macmillan Art Publishing

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