IAN HAMILTON FINLAY

PRINTS + POSTERS

SAILING BARGE REDWING. 1971. ONE OF 300 SIGNED COPIES.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1971
33 x 31.5cm, red and green on white silkscreen in folder. A boat on the water is reflected from below the hull to become a visual pun of a model airplane. In the title, Finlay references the redwing - a winter bird in the UK and is the smallest true thrush which has red flashes on its wings.
This was the first ever Finlay work purchased by Paul Robertson for this collection.
The image we have used here is from a publication - the print we hold is framed in wood and glass and hard to image without reflections - but the work is in VG+ condition. The signed folder is also retained in the frame. Only 300 copies were made.

LITTLE DRUMMER BOY. 1971. ONE OF ONLY 70 COPIES.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 19781
76.4 × 69.2cm, red and black on white silkscreen large print. A drawing of a schooner by Ron Costley shows the reef knots of the typical schooner sails - which remind one of the side decorations of the drum of the martyred boy-revolutionary Joseph Barra. The red also reflects his uniform. This is the first reference we know of to the French revolution in Finlay's work - a theme that became much more central in the 80s. This is one of Finlay's most rare editioned works - only 70 copies were made.
The image we have used here is from a publication - the print we hold is framed in wood and glass and hard to image without reflections - but the work is in VG+ condition.

Ron Costley

PRINZ EUGEN. HOMAGE TO GOMRINGER. 1972. ONE OF 300 SIGNED & NUMBERED EXAMPLES.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1972
38 x 51cm black on grey silkscreen with a drawing of the Nazi Admiral Hipper-class heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen by Ron Costley. Prinz Eugen served with Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine during World War II.
The work is a "homage" to the concrete poet Eugen Gomringer - and by the correspondence of the entitled ship with the artist, FInlay is suggesting Gomringer is a prince amongst poets. One of 300 signed and numbered prints.

Ron Costley

THE WASHINGTON FOUNTAIN. 1972. ONE OF ONLY 38 SIGNED & NUMBERED COPIES.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1972
25 x 34.5cm, grey-green on white offset lithograph with a drawing by Karl Torok of a garden sculpture which has a hidden fountain and water is sprayed out of the side of the cruiser - much as if it was draining its bilges. In printed card folder on which the print is signed and Numebred in pencil by Finlay.
Slight bumping to left of both print and folder but overall VG and very are.

Karl Torok

FAMILY GROUP. 1973.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973
16 × 26.5cm, printed white outer folder content of a 16 × 26.5cm offset lithograph with an additional sheet with a key to the drawing. Karl Torok created a drawing of a topiary landscape for Finlay and each element is identifies as a member of a land-owning extended family and its staff eg Gardner, Cook, Great-Uncle William, Mama, Emily & Rose. It may be that this is an actual family portrait of sorts or a metaphor for how elements of a formal garden might be seen as related to each other. What is noticeable is that the father/mother and children are in the centre of the work and the more distant family and staff tend to be found at the sides. VG+.

Karl Torok

NECKTIE. 1973

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press 1975
35.5 x 44cm, red, orange and black offset lithograph. A first world war tank is overprinted in bright stripes - which of course would have been impractical as disguise in war. What the image does mostly remind one of is a private school tie - and that is the point here, the class origins of the army leadership in the first world war was an important part of the British aspects of the conflict.
This print is, in many ways, a companion print to ACADIA - a camouflaged Second World War tank.
The drawing is by Michael Harvey.

MICHAEL HARVEY

STATIONERY. 1973.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973
30 x 21cm, 4pp with silver and black on white lithograph on the front, content of two sheets - one light blue typing paper and the other a lined "STATIONERY" page much as used by children to line up their handwriting on a blank page (such as the blue sheet). The work plays in part on the homonym "stationery" (stationary). The lined paper visually is also much like a channel or a canal with parallel banks. Button's front cover drawing is minimal and of a boat in outline cutting through the water with an ever-widening wake behind it. This is one of 300 signed and numbered copies in green ink by Finlay. VG+.

David Button, Ron Costley

ARCADIA. 1973.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973
30.5 x 61.0cm, two colour offset lithograph with an image (by George Oliver) of a modern tank in leafy camouflage. The word Arcadia below refers to an unspoilt rural paradise.
The Tate Gallery says of this work (and there is little more to add so we quote it here): "In this print, Finlay draws an ironic parallel between this idea of a natural paradise and the camouflage patterns on a tank. There is also an echo of the Latin phrase ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’ (‘I too was in Arcadia’), used by the seventeenth-century French artist Nicolas Poussin in a painting of a group of shepherds discovering a tomb. Like Poussin, Finlay reminds us that death is present everywhere, even in paradise."

GEORGE OLIVER

HOMAGE TO MALEVICH. 1974. ONE OF 300 SIGNED & NUMBERED EXAMPLES.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d (1974)
28 x 28cm, printed paper folder content of a 28 x 28cm red, blue and black offset lithographic print.
The image is of two world war fighter planes (one on fire having been shot down) and airborne debris - drawn on Finlay's instruction by Michael Harvey.
The style is clearly that of Malevich's Supremacism - an abstract form that used hard edge geometric shapes to create works - in fact Melevich had created a painting of a plane in flight called "Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying" in 1914/5 which is similar in many ways albeit in different colours.
The Tate Gallery claims that "Finlay has said that Malevich would have seen himself as ‘the best aeroplane’, and that the victim in the dog-fight might be Vladimir Tatlin, a rival Soviet artist."
One of 300 copies signed and numbered by Finlay on the back of the folder. VG.

MICHAEL HARVEY

GOURD. 1974. SIGNED & NUMBERED BY FINLAY.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
27.9 x 20.9cm, brown on white laid paper silkscreen with a drawing by Ron Costley after Finlay's instructions of a cross section of an aircraft carrier with airplanes and plan from above of the landing strip. Just as certain fruit gourds carry their seeds only at the right moment to discard them to the air so does this weapon of war. One of 350 copies in a light card folder which is signed and numbered in pencil on the back by Finlay. Slight crease bottom left through both folder and print.

Ron Costley

APOLLO AND DAPHNE. AFTER BERNINI. 1975.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1975
49.7 x 36cm, olive green and black on white screenprint. The line drawing by Ron Costley is a copy of the outline of the original Bernini sculpture of the gods.
There is a text beneath the image: ‘APOLLO AND DAPHNE/ after Bernini/BIBLIOGRAPHY - Ovid, “Metamorphoses”; Rudolf Wittkower, “The Sculptures of Gian Lorenzo Bernini”; Historical Research Unit, Vol. 6, “Uniforms of the SS”’.
The classical story of the pair is one of desire - Apollo being consumed by lust for Daphne (thanks to Eros messing with his motivation) and Daphne desiring to remain chaste (Again this is down to Eros). When Apollo did manage to catch Daphne (presumably with rape his intent) Daphne's father Peneus turned her into an laurel tree - hence saving her virginity.
The Tate Gallery website claims Finlay explained that "the gods and nature ‘were behaving not unlike the Waffen SS’ (who were the first to use a smock with a leaf camouflage pattern, hence its identification with them). This image, in which Daphne is wearing a camouflage smock which replaces ‘nature’, was used as the poster for the exhibition ‘Ian Hamilton Finlay: Collaborations’ at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, 1977."
One of 300 such prints issued by the press as a limited printed edition. Fine.

Ron Costley

HOMAGE TO WATTEAU. L’EMBARQUEMENT POUR L’ILE DE CYTHERE. 1975

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1975
34.1 × 22.8cm, 4pp printed outer folder (black on cream) with the title text and inside a single sheet of green wove paper with the words ANTIQUE WOVE printed at the bottom.
This was one of the first of such works where the paper choice added within a folder is a comment on the subject matter. The choice of green antique wove paper is a reference to the verdant countryside of the Watteau painting, the fact it is a classical "antique" theme.
This innovation of creating a poem using the very materials employed in the printing is to the best of our knowledge a Finlay invention and, as we say, used in similar such works by the poet in later years.
Very slight grubbiness to outer folder else VG.