Hands Etching - O Laborum, from Oeuvre de M. Francis Seymous Haden

This frontispiece and folio come from what has been called “among the most important portfolios of etchings produced in the nineteenth century.” Haden, along with the celebrated painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler, led the revival of pure etching in Britain. They cultivated the technique’s potential for personal expression, especially in the representation of landscape. This frontispiece and folio come from the first and most influential publication of Haden’s work, a collection of twenty-five etchings selected and described by Burty, a well-known French critic. The Blanton’s is one of only six complete copies. The frontispiece aptly features a kind of selfportrait: Haden’s study of his own hands at work with an etching needle and plate.