Prints & Multiples

The Moment I Fell in Love with Prints

29 June 2026

Kirstie Davidson

For 200 years, Lyon & Turnbull has been built on specialist knowledge passed from one generation to the next. As part of our bicentenary celebrations, we are inviting colleagues from across the business to share the stories behind their fields of expertise.

Our Head of Prints & Multiples, Kirstie Davidson, reflects on the works, artists and discoveries that have helped shaped her career, and on what continues to draw her to the world of prints.

My interest in prints developed gradually. They did not play a formative part of my art history education at school or university, yet a few years after graduation I joined the Prints Department at Sotheby’s, where I spent years learning about the medium, and the artists who shaped and transformed it.

When I began working with prints, I was intrigued. I was seeing works by artists whose names I recognised, yet like many people, I wasn’t exactly sure what a ‘print’ was.

Prints are unique as a specialty in that they cover an enormous time span, from the 1400s to the present day, across a wide range of techniques. This is something that has always appealed to me. There are few other disciplines that cover such a broad time span and offer the opportunity to study the evolution of a technique from conception through to today. There’s an element of working with prints that really appeals to my more academic side. In one day, I might see a tiny etched Rembrandt self-portrait, a Picasso linocut and a Warhol screenprint.

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Then there is the thrill of the auction, which was probably my first love. I vividly remember going with my department to watch the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale. We were offering an extremely rare impression of Edvard Munch’s lithograph The Scream, which soared to a world-record price of over £1.8 million, a record unbeaten to this day. The buzz of watching something reach its true potential at auction is an unbeatable feeling.

In essence, my love of prints comes from many different directions. The sheer scope of the medium means that around every corner is something I haven’t seen before, a mystery to be unravelled. I am drawn to the academic side - the ‘nerdy’ part of my brain enjoys nothing more than examining the paper, using a magnifying glass to check the condition and look for repairs. I am equally drawn to the excitement of an auction and the slower, more sedate pace of research and examination.

The Privilege of Handling Prints

I remember my first visit to a paper restorer’s studio. There were sheets of paper pressed between boards with clamps to flatten creases, other sheets were submerged in water for cleaning. Others were laid under magnifying apparatus awaiting repairs. Some of these works have been around for centuries, and somehow, they come into our hands, where we have the privilege of handling them and finding them new homes.

There are certain areas of printmaking that give me a real sense of excitement. One of these is the prints of the Grosvenor School. These works were created when Great Britain was reeling from the end of the First World War and adapting to a new, faster rhythm of modern life. These artists - Claude Flight, Cyril Power, Sybil Andrews and Lill Tschudi - captured the essence of this fast-paced and ever-changing society in their work. A play on the immediacy of the modern age, they turned to a once-discarded technique and adapted it to produce works of such vibrancy and movement that you can’t help but be drawn in. These linocuts were printed on the most delicate tissue paper, with scruffy printed margins and hand-written annotations. Cyril Power’s The Tube Station transports you into the tunnels of London’s Underground, the brilliant red tube flashing by. Claude Flight’s Speed deposits you on Regent Street, one of the busiest hubs of central London, red double-decker buses as far as the eye can see. The immediacy of the subject matter is belied by the delicacy of the execution; the fragility of the support contrasted beautifully with the boldness of the medium.

When examining a print, there are often many layers to untangle. These include the artist’s intention, the context at the time of printing, and the technical process. Alongside these are more subjective considerations – the quality of the impression, the condition of the sheet.

In an auction house context, there is also of course a market dimension. Ultimately, these works are for sale. How should they be estimated? How are we going to market them? Will they resonate with collectors? It is all of these factors that keep the field so engaging and ensure there is always more to learn.

With something like Picasso’s Le Repas Frugal, for example, those elements become especially apparent. The artist’s state of mind and lived experience are embedded in every line, while the quality of the impression and condition directly affect how the work will be received. Ultimately, each of these aspects affects how I relate to a work, and the level of excitement it generates when I encounter it.

If I had to pinpoint what I love about prints, I would struggle to choose just one aspect. The variety, the flexibility, the intrinsic details of the paper, the constant sense of discovery, the hours spent writing a condition report for an Old Master print barely larger than a postage stamp – it all comes together under this one umbrella, and the possibilities of what might come through the door, and onto the cataloguing table, are endless.

Specialist

Kirstie Davidson

Head of Prints & Multiples | London