Andrew Wyeth

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1968. FIRST Printing. Hardcover. VG/VG a lovely copy. Oblong, tan cloth boards with maroon half-cloth spine, illustrated dustjacket, 175 pp. approx. 165 mostly color plates. OVERSIZED. A selection of landscape paintings rendered by American artist Andrew Newell Wyeth (1917-2009). Wyeth supervised the asssembly of this book, so that the prints most accurately reflect the nuances of the originals. Surely a treasure for any fan of the Wyeth family. "the paintings to be reproduced (almost the entire body of his major work [in 1968]) were photographed directly from the originals ... Those paintings most difficult to reproduce, about half of them, were then reproduced directly from the photographic negative by screenless collotype - the most accurate of reproduction processes. Each picture was proofed, corrected, and proofed again until it satisfied the artist. So that the pressman might have the near equivalent of the original painting before him these prints were then used as guides for the regular run of the work, which was done only six pictures at a time on an intaglio press over a period of more than eight months. Next to the collotype process itself, which calls for painstaking impressions made from sheets of aluminum, intaglio printing is most suited to the reproduction of fine works of art by reason of its free-flowing ink and consequent depth of impression. The intaglio plates were proofed, corrected from the collotype impressions, and proofed again until they, too, were satisfactory. Only then was the full edition run. The binding of so large a book presented a unique problem requiring the setting up of special machinery and much careful handwork. No comparable effort on so large a scale in the field of fine printing has been made in this country." Dust Jacket.