Self-portrait

Augusta Payne Rathbone

Augusta Rathbone portrays herself in oils, broad brushstrokes reminiscent of the Fauves and Impressionists, particularly Pierre Bonnard, whose work she studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. It was this very style that her mentor Norah Hamilton recognized as a good fit for the printmaking medium, a prophetic observation that led Rathbone to create her largest body of work using etching and aquatint.

In chartreuse and plums, Rathbone portrays herself in the fashionable colors of the time but without unnecessary frills, and giving herself a distinctly sober expression – belied slightly by the addition of wine-red lipstick.

While in Paris in 1927, Augusta Rathbone was introduced to printmaking and thereafter worked primarily in color aquatint combined with line etching. Rathbone, who had studied briefly with Bonnard, uses a freely drawn black etched line to capture rough shapes which are then filled with color, using aquatint. She worked with Monsieur Porcabeuf, a professional printer in Paris, who would prove her prepared plates. In the 1930s she traveled the French Riviera and her color palette adapted to the colorful villages throughout the region.

Rathbone produced twenty color aquatints of the French Riviera and around 1938 she joined forces with Juliet and Virginia Thompson to create the illustrated book, French Riviera Villages, which was published that year by Mitchell Kennerly. Twelve of Rathbone's original color aquatints were reproduced mechanically by photography and then hand colored with pochoir. Juliet Thompson photographed the villages and Virginia Thompson wrote a history on each village. Rathbone's aquatints are a modernist homage to these ancient villages.