Lot 140
£2,016
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture
Auction: Evening Sale: 08 June 2023 | From 18:00
Signed and numbered XIII in pen to margin, etching from an edition of 30
Note: McBey’s etchings proved incredibly popular with London audiences. His career break came with an exhibition at the Goupil Gallery, where he sold seventy-seven prints, and his most in-demand compositions were those inspired by travels abroad. He had first experienced the benefits of new visual and art-historical stimuli while travelling in the Netherlands in 1910, where he painted, drew, and studied Rembrandt’s etchings in the Rijksmuseum. Visits to Morocco and Spain followed shortly thereafter, and McBey amassed a significant body of work depicting Spanish bull-fighting rings.The thrilling, theatrical atmosphere of the ring is captured in The Ovation to the Matador (c.1911) wherein a bull-fighter in traditional attire presents himself triumphantly. The crowd he faces is unseen, but their jubilant reception is made evident by the matador’s raised arms and delighted expression. McBey adjusted this composition for a dynamic etching of the same title, which evidences his mastery of intaglio to evoke varied qualities of light and shadow.
Spain would prove to be a continuing source of inspiration. A Brave Bull, San Sebastian (1932) (Lot 141) post-dates the etching market crash which compelled McBey to predominantly work in watercolour and oil paint.