Stems (A Study)

Francis Seymour Haden, a successful London physician and art collector, was a prolific amateur printmaker and one of the leading figures of the 19th-century etching revival. This trial proof represents a rare early state of the print, one of four second states known (Mia, British Museum, New York Public Library, and private collection). In the final print Haden would reduce the size of the plate by half to focus on the clump of gnarled tree trunks at right in this composition (see Mia P.3, 790). In the later tightly cropped scene, the foreground, upper edge of the sky, and trees at left would be eliminated. Both Mia's impression of the second state and the British Museum's come from Haden's private collection and bear the artist's collector's stamp on the verso, with the inscription If I May [SI JE PUIS] in French, and Forever [HA BCETДA] in Russian. We are grateful Antoine Rouillé d'Orfeuil for clarifying the states and provenance of this work.