Tower on the Rhine, Near Constance

 

James David Smillie

  1833 - 1909 (biography)

1905 /printed 1911 (posthumous) 

aquatint with mezzotint 

6 7/8 x 4 7/8"  

monogrammed in the plate, lower left 

 

dated 1905 in the plate after signature; pencil, lower left margin; "Robert Hulse Imp. March 1911" 

JDS103; W103 

ivory simile vellum 

ii/ii 

 

BC112 

SOLD

Smillie began this print in 1894, working from one of four watercolors he had painted that year for a projected series of towers, this being the Rhine Gate Tower in Konstanz, Germany. This would be his first time using a combination of soft-ground etching and aquatint, and he documented his steps in detail. However, while the reference watercolor, "Tower at Constance - Rhine - Entrance," was exhibited in 1895 with the American Watercolor Society, he ended up setting aside the aquatint for nine years. In 1905 he finally reworked the plate, but never completed an edition due to his failing health. After his death in 1909, the work of printing the completed plate was taken up by Robert Hulse in 1911 (signature along lower left sheet edge). It stands as a superb example of Smillie's sensitive, sure-handed approach to the plate, acheiving a complex tonality within a small matrix.

The Rhine Gate Tower was built in the mid-16th century in an attempt to protect the city of Konstanz from invading Spanish troops. It failed, and the Spanish took the city. Today it remains a part of the city and acts as abn observation deck with views of the Rhine and Lake Constance.