Brier Hill Gallery

Name: Brier Hill Gallery
Address: 151 Corey Street, Boston, MA, 02132, US
Telephone: +16174699669
Price range: $$

Home
United States
Boston, MA
Brier Hill Gallery

James Reid: Selected Wood Engravings is our first such offering.

Brier Hill Gallery emphasizes 20th century fine prints, relevant illustrated and rare books, and occasional publications devoted to the recognition of outstanding but lesser known artists.

03/14/2024

Thanks to Julian Francis for solving the mystery of the prancing Aztecs.

02/19/2024

I recently acquired a group of Daumier lithographs, all of them published in Le Charivari, a French periodical active from 1832 to 1937 and known for its satirical content. The images were crudely scissored out of each issue by person or persons unknown in the distant past. This example lacks its caption; the only information consists of Daumier's initials drawn in the stone, the number 805 visible at the edge of the table top, and a fragment of the publication data beneath the partial lower margin.

I searched on line for another occurrence of this distinctive image. It there is one, I missed it; I'd welcome assistance in identifying this work with not only the publication date but also the text of the missing caption.

09/01/2022

A Rare and Wonderful Find

Camera Work, edited and published by Alfred Stieglitz largely at his own expense from 1903 to 1917, issued fifty quarterly numbers before declining subscriptions, wartime materials shortages, and growing interest on Stieglitz’s part in other forms of graphic expression led him to cease its publication.

The design of Camera Work was created by Stieglitz and remained consistent throughout its run, including the papers, typography, and graphic elements. The cover of each number, designed by Edward Steichen, was gray-green wove stock, with text and embellishments printed in a light gray ink. The text was a heavy cream laid paper with deckle edges, and bore the watermark “Enfield S. CO  1887”. Its color provided tonal contrast to enhance the appearance of the monochrome Japan tissue overlays. Each gravure was tipped to its companion text leaf at two corners using water-soluble glue. The printed signatures were gathered, sewn, and glued, and the cover attached.

Different production firms were employed in response to Stieglitz’s relentless take-no-prisoners pursuit of mechanical and aesthetic perfection. Beginning with a press run of 1000 copies (later reduced to 500) and about 650 paying subscribers, the subscription base eroded to 304 by 1912 and to a dismal 36 at the time the final number of Camera Work was issued. Stieglitz is said to have destroyed the unsold remainder of each issue, creating an artificial scarcity that has bedeviled collectors of Camera Work ever since.

From the outset, Stieglitz made a point of donating issues of Camera Work to the New York Public Library, the Royal Photographic Society, and The Camera Club of New York in order to establish secure and redundant archives of Camera Work for future reference and research.

Our worn but intact copy of Camera Work 36 is notable for containing the largest single group of work by Alfred Stieglitz to appear in the fourteen-year-long history of his publication. (Second place goes to Camera Work 12, published in October, 1905, containing 10 Stieglitz gravures).

Published in October, 1911, Camera Work ###VI included sixteen gravures of images of New York City taken by Alfred Stieglitz between 1892 and 1911. The gravures were printed in black ink by Manhattan Photogravure Company of New York. Fifteen of them were printed on translucent Japan tissue known for its highly smooth surface; the sixteenth (Lower Manhattan, 1910), for reasons unknown, was printed on opaque photo paper. The cover and text pages for this volume were printed by Rogers & Company, and bound by the Knickerbocker Bindery, both of New York.

The issue in its entirety has been unbound, cleaned, and conserved. The gravures have been individually mounted and matted using museum-quality materials. We will post PDF files of the volume as received and as restored in the coming weeks. The individual gravures are listed on the Brier Hill Gallery website under Stieglitz.

02/02/2022

Imogen Cunningham (1883 - 1976) took this photograph of dancer Martha Graham (1894 - 1991) in 1931. We recently acquired an estate print of this work, which nicely complements Barbara Morgan's classic "Kick" of 1940.

08/05/2021

I recently acquired a large collection of wood engravings by Timothy Cole, vastly increasing his representation here at Brier Hill Gallery. Cole was a masterful draftsman and artisan, producing a body of work after famous European and American painters. Here's a case in point, Pandora, a wood engraving printed on Japan paper, inspired by Dante Gabriel Rossetti's 1879 drawing after his original 1871 oil painting, which most recently sold at a Sotheby's auction in 2014.

07/15/2021

Recent arrivals will soon be posted to the Brier Hill website, including two wood engravings by Bernard Brussel-Smith: Meditation (1940) and Shore Leave (1941), together with two silver gelatin photographs, one by Abe Frajndlich (Century 21 Reflection – New York City, May 6, 2001), and the other by Robert Dorksen (County Workhouse, 1972)

03/21/2021

In the flood tide of the patriotic fervor that swept through Europe in the weeks and months leading to the first World War, nineteen year old Peter Kollwitz enlisted as a rifleman in the 207th Reserve Infantry Regiment of the Imperial German Army. On October 23 of that year he was killed in the opening battle of the Ypres campaign in Belgium, just ten days after bidding his parents farewell, and was buried in common graves at Roggevelde along with with 3,232 of his comrades. These soldiers were later moved, along with 20,400 additional casualties buried at numerous smaller cemeteries in the area to the consolidated site of the Vladslo German War Cemetery, near Diksmuide, Belgium.

The death of Peter Kollwitz, like so many others, would long since have been forgotten but for the tangible portrayals of the grief felt by his mother, artist Käthe Kollwitz, in two of her most moving and important works. The first of these is Krieg, the cycle of seven large, dramatic woodcuts published in 1922 and 1923, which depict the horrors of war in deeply human, universally understandable ways. The second, a pair of statues bearing the likenesses of Kollwitz and her husband Karl, were sculpted by Kollwitz and entitled die Eltern (the Parents). They were initially installed at Roggevelde in 1932 and relocated in 1954 to Vladslo.

We were most fortunate to secure woodcuts of Die Eltern (plate 3) and Die Mütter (plate 6) recently. Perhaps the most moving of he cycle is plate 2, Die Freiwilligen (The Volunteers), which pictures Death leading a file of young soldiers in various stages of mortality. The figure at the center of the image is a representation of Peter Kollwitz. As it happened, his nephew and namesake was killed on the Eastern front in 1942, a blow from which Käthe Kollwitz never fully recovered.

03/07/2021

This magnificent etching came our way recently. "Stowing the Mainsail," by Arthur Briscoe (1873 - 1943), was published in 1930 in an edition of 75 proofs; our copy is number 22. In an edition of modest size and in the hands of an expert press operator, any one of the 75 should be virtually identical to all of the others. Some collectors thrill to the acquisition of a low numbered proof, but in reality there is no way to tell what the birth order of the run might actually be: number 1` may well be the last proof pulled from the press. Number 22 has been lovingly cared for and we are delighted to have it, 90+ years after its birth.

03/03/2021

Our most recent auction purchases include some truly magnificent works, including three Buhot etchings in fine condition, a beautiful etching by Arthur Briscoe, and this large 1967 etching and mezzotint by Boston native Jack Levine (1915 - 2010) "The End of the Weimar Republic," inspired by the William L. Shirer's writings during that period, when he was an eyewitness observer of unfolding catastrophe.

Shirer describes the advanced senility of President Paul von Hindenburg, masked by his towering reputation among the German people, at the fateful moment when Hindenburg has been persuaded by scheming politicians to name Hi**er Chancellor of a nation in social and economic turmoil, symbolized by Hindenburg's vacant stare as he hands the symbolic baton of state authority to Hi**er.

02/28/2021

Here are some recent additions to the Brier Hill Gallery inventory: "Hear, O Israel, a 1944 drypoint by Isaac Friedlander; "Jo," a 1936 lithograph by Blanche Grambs, "Reflection, Playhouse Square," a ca. 2000 large silver-gelatin photograph by Patrick Corrigan, and "Q***r House," a 1951 woodcut by Norman Kent.

12/05/2020

The favorite bureaucratic piñata in Massachusetts and no doubt elsewhere is the Registry of Motor Vehicles. I have been dealing with RMV here for more than fifty years. I know that saying what I am about to say will provoke torch-carrying mobs to drag me from my house, tie me to a stake in the nearest public square, and chant the complete poems of Rod McKuen in my face until I take leave of my critical faculties and learn to recite "A Cat Named Sloopy" aloud and without warning in the most inappropriate and embarrassing circumstances, rather like a down market Manchurian Candidate. Well, damn the skeptics! I have never had an unpleasant or ineffective experience with RMV. Ever.

Yesterday, the late Ellen M. Hilly and I had occasion to travel to the Watertown Registry office, where she had scheduled an appointment to renew her driver's license which had expired during the Corona virus brouhaha. The premises, both neat and spacious, were crowded with others sharing the same problem. Upon arrival, we were greeted and choreographed by two helpful, well-mannered, and efficient men who explained, with appropriate regret, that the office was running behind but that we would be called when our respective time slots were ready for assistance.

Lo and behold, the 2 PM group, of which Ms. Hilly was a member, was called to action just twenty minutes late, which was hardly worth mentioning. Ms. H was questioned about her likelihood of exposure to Covid, answered the questions to the officer's satisfaction, joined a fast-moving queue, and soon found herself on one side of a Plexiglas barrier, where an efficient and pleasant RMV employee on the other side thereof processed her paperwork, took a quite acceptable photograph of her for the license, and collected her payment for the renewal. End of story. A triumph for the bureaucracy. And swift victory for the unnecessarily apprehensive citizen.

This, dear friends, is what government is all about, and an example of public service at its best. Can you imagine what the RMV would be like if Donald J. Trump was its Commissioner?

11/18/2020

Gwendolyn Lanier was born in Boston in 1986. She received her BFA in Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2009. She also received her Post Baccalaureate in Graduate Studies from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Her work has been widely exhibited.

This charcoal and crayon drawing on paper is titled Conforto nel Buio (Solace in the Dark). When I first saw it on line at the Attleboro Arts Museum benefit auction, it reminded me of a mezzotint.

Address

151 Corey Street
Boston, MA
02132

Telephone

+16174699669

Website

http://www.brierhillgallery.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Brier Hill Gallery posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Brier Hill Gallery:

Shortcuts

Want your business to be the top-listed Shop in Boston?