Print of the Day!! Thurs, March 23, 2025 is by printmaker Augusta Payne Rathbone (1897-1990): "Washington Square, NY"; color intaglio; 1943; 9/9.

Print of the Day!! Thursday, March 23, 2025 is by modernist California printmaker Augusta Payne Rathbone (1897-1990).

The Annex Galleries is once again featuring for sale prints and works of art by women, done during the last 125 years, honoring Women's History Month, 2025. These works will be presented daily for the month of March. ?

Most of these artists are not included in standard art books or auctions but their artworks will survive. We have attempted to include biographies for each artist so their remarkable lives are not forgotten.

"Washington Square, NY" is a color intaglio, an etching and aquatint by Augusta Payne Rathbone (1897-1990) done in 1943. The platemark measures 8-3/4 x 5-13/16 inches and is pencil signed and editioned "9/9" by the artist in the lower margin. The image was printed by the artist on a ivory wove paper that measures 19-3/4 x 16 inches. The gallery inventory number for this work is QUHI101.

This scarce color intaglio by printmaker Augusta Payne Rathbone (1897-1990) is available from the gallery for purchase. Contact the gallery with any condition or other questions. Shipping costs will be discussed. California residents will have sales tax added. Out of state residents may be responsible for use tax, depending on state law.

This Modernist color aquatint and etching is of Washington Square in Greenwich Village in New York. Rather than focus her attention on the iconic Washington Square Arch Rathbone instead chose to depict the colorful row houses on Waverly Place, across from the park.

The park is the center of activity for the Greenwich Village area, bustling with tourists, chess players, artists, students, children and residents enjoying the weather throughout the year. Rathbone depicts a mother and baby carriage in the park in fall. A twisted, skeletal tree stretches into a clouded sky. The mostly red, brick buildings from the houses add a brightness to an otherwise drab day.

The 1833 row of red brick townhouses on the north end of Washington Square Park, known as "Waverly Place," belongs to the later phase of the Federal style, spanning the late-18th to early-19th century in the newly independent former American colonies.

Print scholar/author David Acton commented about Rathbone's printing on page 108 of his book "A Spectrum of Innovation, Color in American Printmaking, 1890-1960" ?(ISBN 0-393-02902-8): "...printed from a single plate in at least two passes through the press...Aquatint was layered on the plate in staged biting, and stop-out was not used in the areas of the etched lines; thus, the lines are surrounded by haloes of shading in the finished print. All of the colors were probably applied to the plate at once, with a brush or rag in thin washes, and then printed in the first pass through the press. The black ink intaglio and the shallow aquatint...were printed in a second pass. Registration was achieved using two pin holes through the plate, which were hidden in the etched lines..."

Augusta Payne Briggs Rathbone, painter and printmaker, was born in Berkeley, California on 30 November 1897. In 1900, her parents, Henry and Julia Briggs Rathbone, were living in the San Francisco home of her grandparents, Obil and Mary Briggs, and that same year her mother passed away. After the 1906 earthquake and conflagration, Rathbone was sent to live in Berkeley with her aunt, Edith Moses. Rathbone eventually returned to San Francisco where she attended Miss Hamlin's School for Girls and Young Ladies. She received her BA degree from the University of California Berkeley in 1920 and the following year she sailed to Paris where she continued her studies at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. She also studied with Lucien Simon and for several years with the Spanish artist Claudio Castelucho y Diana.

Rathbone returned to France for extended periods over the next eighteen years and her studio was located at the University Women's Club now known as Reid Hall. Painting and sketching were her main interests until her introduction to printmaking in 1927 by the artist Nora Hamilton of Chicago. Rathbone began to concentrate on printmaking and took her plates to Monsieur Alfred Porcabeuf in Paris for printing. Her earliest intaglios featured the Sierra Nevada and urban scenes of New York and San Francisco. In the late 1930s, Rathbone created etching and aquatints of the villages in Brittany and the French Riviera. After World War II, she returned to Paris but in the face of prohibitive printing costs she purchased a small press and taught herself how to print her plates.

While in Paris in 1927, Augusta Rathbone became further acquainted with printmaking and thereafter worked primarily in color aquatint combined with line etching. Rathbone, who had also studied briefly with Bonnard, uses a freely drawn black etched line to capture rough shapes which are then filled with color, using aquatint. She worked with a professional printer Alfred Porcabeuf in Paris, who would prove her prepared plates. In the 1930s she traveled the French Riviera and her color palette adapted to the colorful villages throughout the region.

To purchase this work, see other works, or read a biography for Augusta Payne Rathbone use this link to our website: https://www.annexgalleries.com/inventory/artist/1956/Rathbone/Augusta

Use this link to view our complete inventory on our website: https://www.annexgalleries.com/inventory/