Dated Web objects 1960 and after

Raphael Soyer

Date: 1974

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Gift in memory of Emiliano Sorini, printmaker

Object number: 2004.3.1

Text Entries: On the surface of this copper plate Raphael Soyer created the original image for his etching <i>Self Portrait</i>, which he printed in two states (<a href="http://collection.terraamericanart.org/objects/1370">TF 2004.4</a>, <a href="http://collection.terraamericanart.org/objects/1377">TF 2004.7</a>). The artist drew a series of lines on the plate that, with the aid of acid, were incised on the metal surface. Due to the nature of the printing process, the printed impressions reverse the image on the plate. While the copper surface is somewhat murky and hard to read, the evident clusters of lines, when inked, translate into a touching representation of the elderly artist's face.<br><br> Etching plates such as this are relative rarities, for many artists limit the number of impressions they print by defacing or destroying their plates after printing. However, such objects can yield valuable insights into an artist's working methods when compared with various states of the resulting etching.

Raphael Soyer

Date: 1974

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art,Gift in memory of Emiliano Sorini, printmaker

Object number: 2004.4

Text Entries: This etching by Raphael Soyer is an earlier state of the <a href="http://collection.terraamericanart.org/objects/1377"><i>Self Portrait</i> (TF 2004.7)</a> the artist made at age seventy-five from a still-extant copper plate <a href="http://collection.terraamericanart.org/objects/1398">(TF 2004.3.1)</a>. It is one of numerous self-images this realist artist made throughout his career to record his appearance at a particular time of life. For this state of the print, Soyer almost completely delineated the main features of his face and head, while the splotchy background is not yet fully resolved. He made this impression to check his progress in realizing the image. Comparison between this impression and the finished etching reveals that between the two states Soyer added more shading to further modulate the tonal areas on the face and neck, thereby heightening the illusion of three-dimensionality, and added dense cross-hatching to evoke a dark, shadowy background.

Raphael Soyer

Date: 1974

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Gift in memory of Emiliano Sorini, printmaker

Object number: 2004.6

Text Entries: Cole, Sylvan with foreword by Jacob Kainen. <i>Raphael Soyer: Fifty Years of Printmaking 1917–1967</i>. New York: Da Capo Press, 1967. No. 107 [cites 1964 version of this print].

Raphael Soyer

Date: 1974

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Gift in memory of Emiliano Sorini, printmaker

Object number: 2004.7

Text Entries: Raphael Soyer's late <i>Self Portrait</i> presents the balding, aged artist in an unflinchingly honest take on the traditional bust portrait, with the subject turned slightly away from the picture plane and light illuminating his head from the right against a plain dark background. Soyer peers out at the viewer from under arched eyebrows, but his abstracted gaze and somber expression hint at a more powerful inner vision—one that sees into the murkiness of his own future rather than out at the world around him.<br><br> A self-portrait was one of the very first etchings Soyer made, in 1917, when he was a teenaged art student. Over the course of his career, he made many intense, close-up self-portraits in painting and various drawing and printmaking media. At age seventy-five, Soyer worked with his longtime collaborator, master intaglio printer Emiliano Sorini, to realize this poignant self-image that conveys the artist's honest scrutiny of his aged visage and recognition of his own mortality. As he explained in his later years: "I've painted and drawn myself countless times because, frankly, I am an introvert and introverts are involved with themselves. Usually, I draw and paint myself when I am alone, moody and unshaven, recalling mentally self-portraits by favorite masters. When I was young and painted a self portrait, I tried to imagine what I would look like old. Now when I paint myself I remember my youthful self-portraits and what I looked like then and meditate on what time does to all of us."<br><br>    Comparison of the original etched plate <a href="http://collection.terraamericanart.org/objects/1398">(TF 2004.3.1)</a>, the print's first state <a href="http://collection.terraamericanart.org/objects/1370">(TF 2004.4)</a>, and this example of the second state of this self-portrait yields insights into Soyer's graphic process. Between the first and second states, he strengthened the outlines of the head and the contrasts of light and dark between the sparsely etched area at the bottom of the print and the dark tones of the background surrounding the head achieved by dense cross-hatching. Soyer's use of line and variety of strokes results in an image of this seemingly frail, wispy haired old man, with a small, set mouth and a pointed chin. To indicate the collar, sleeves, and front of his simple white shirt, he strategically placed a few lines. Soyer's dark upraised eyebrows above his unflinching, deep-set eyes compel the viewer to confront him as a fellow human being.

Raphael Soyer

Date: 1976

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Gift in memory of Emiliano Sorini, printmaker

Object number: 2004.5

Text Entries: In this untitled etching by Raphael Soyer, a nude woman stands beside a dark screen, grasping its edge as if about to enter its enclosure. Cast-off clothes are draped over the screen. She looks toward a short man in profile, just visible at the left edge of the image. This figure is probably the artist himself, holding several stretched canvases under his arm. Instead of being presented in a formal pose, the nude appears to be conferring with the artist, presumably just before or after a modeling session. By severely cropping the artist's body and dedicating the right half of the composition to the dark tones of the flat screen, Soyer focused attention on the centrally placed nude. Portrayed in an unguarded moment, as if unaware that she is the subject of the image, she is distinctly unidealized: a no-longer young woman with rather unkempt hair, heavy features, and a sturdy body.<br><br> In the 1930s, Soyer began to make drawings, paintings, and prints of nude models in his studio. He usually captured them in informal poses, often in the act of dressing or undressing, to heighten the spontaneity and casual intimacy of his images. By showing the artist apparently entering the scene in this work, Soyer emphasizes the process behind the creation of images of the nude. In its informality and assertion of the model as an ordinary woman, Soyer's print recalls <a href="http://collection.terraamericanart.org/people/135">George Bellows's</a> earlier painting <a href="http://collection.terraamericanart.org/objects/500"><i>Nude Girl, Miss Leslie Hall</i> (TF 1999.5)</a>, in which the model is shown as if dressing herself following a posing session.