Valerie Thornton Etchings

VALERIE THORNTON

ETCHINGS GOLDMARK

2011

Lavenham, £650 etching & aquatint, ed 50, signed, 40 x 52 cm

Sussex Place, £750

etching & aquatint, 1970, signed artist’s proof, 37 x 57.5 cm

Prices include frame, vat and uk delivery

School’s Quadrangle, Oxford University, £550 etching & aquatint, ed 40, signed, 35.5 x 52 cm

Escó, Sigüés, Spain, £475

etching & aquatint, 1982, ed 50, signed, 26 x 36.5 cm

front cover:

St Margaret’s, Cley, £750

etching and aquatint, 1973, ed 70, signed, 39 x 51.5 cm

S. Euphemia, Spoleto, £650

etching & aquatint, 1985, ed 70, signed, 54 x 34 cm

To order phone 01572 821424

Queen's College, Oxford, £550

etching & aquatint, c1980, signed artist’s proof, 39.5 x 52.5 cm

Aachen, £600

etching & aquatint, 1982, ed 70, signed, 37 x 22 cm

www.valeriethornton.com

Ponte Vecchio, Florence, £650

etching & aquatint, 1972, ed 60, signed, 31 x 39.5 cm

Churchill College, Cambridge, £475

etching & aquatint, 1973, ed 70, signed, 34 x 53 cm

Caporciano, £450

etching & aquatint, 1987, ed 50, signed, 26.5 x 36.5 cm

Merton College Chapel, Oxford, £650 etching, ed 35, signed, 46 x 36 cm

To order phone 01572 821424

VALERIE THORNTON

Valerie Thornton was born in London where she studied art at the Regent Street Polytechnic School of Art for four years. During that period, 1950-53, she visited a photographic exhibition in Charing Cross showing old church buildings and almost immediately knew that she had discovered a consuming passion and subject for her art or, as she later succinctly stated, buildings have been my language. In short Thornton subsequently developed into one of Britain’s finest post-war etchers, particularly in her depictions of architectural subjects and Sir John Rothenstein later said, …in her hands, the etched plate has an almost sculpted presence.

As a student Thornton also saw Stanley William Hayter’s film about the avantgarde etching being done at his Atelier

17 workshop in Paris and in 1954 she went to study printmaking with him.

The same year she also acquired her first etching press and this medium remained her favoured method of printmaking. In 1955 Thornton spent time studying and drawing in Italy and thereafter made many trips to work in Europe.

Around that time Thornton also exhibited with the Regent Street Group in London and held her first solo show at The Minories, Colchester in 1960. She later exhibited regularly in London and the provinces and also in America where she lived and worked on two occasions.

During the 1970s she made many etchings of East Anglian churches which demonstrated her particular concern with the textures of building materials,

such as stone, flint or brick, and the way in which they have weathered over many centuries. Another favourite subject was Romanesque architecture and she depicted many churches in France, Italy and Spain but in the latter part of her career she perhaps favoured figurative carvings.

She became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers in 1966 and was a founder member of the Printmakers’ Council. Her work is highly regarded, being found in many public collections including, in this country, the British Museum, the Tate Gallery, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and abroad at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Boston Museum of Fine Art and the Biblioteque Nationale, Paris.

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