Bassano Bridge
About this artwork
Bassano Bridge is one of ten multicolour woodcut prints made by Mackie using an experimental printing technique developed over many years. He began by tracing the outlines of one of his watercolour paintings onto celluloid; this was used to create a stencil for cutting the wood block into separate colour blocks. By using block shapes like brush marks, these prints imitate the vibrancy and Impressionistic fluidity of painted watercolours. Bassano Bridge required fourteen blocks, printed by hand in different colours and tones. Often blocks were used more than once or areas overprinted, resulting in up to forty colour applications for one print. This painstaking application of individual colours resulted in a rich variation between impressions, as clear from the two examples in our collection, this one and the Bassano Bridge bequeathed in 2012 by the Henry and Sula Walton collection. The image shows the Bridge of the Alpini in Bassano del Grappa near Venice. The watercolour of this composition is in Perth Museum and Art Gallery.
Updated before 2020
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artist:Charles Hodge Mackie (1862 - 1920) Scottish
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title:Bassano Bridge
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date created:About 1915
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materials:Multicolour woodcut printed with fourteen wood blocks on paper
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measurements:50.50 x 52.6 cm
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object type:
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credit line:Purchased 1987
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accession number:P 2855
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gallery:
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subject:
Charles Hodge Mackie
Charles Hodge Mackie
Mackie was born in Aldershot but was raised and trained in Edinburgh. In 1892 he visited Brittany and met Paul Sérusier, who brought him into contact with the work of Gauguin and the other Nabis. He worked in Paris in 1893 and again in 1900. Mackie took up woodblock printing around 1898, and his...