Divergent Paths

Seymour Haden worked and reworked this drypoint, Divergent Paths, creating five different states or versions of this landscape (see also Mia P.3, 924 and P.3, 925). This is a rare first state, one of only two known (the other in a private collection), printed before the artist added trees and a pond to the composition. Both first states were printed on old paper Haden extracted from a book, each sheet stamped with the same official GEN. DE PARIS stamp, here to the left of the platemark, as well as a similar pen annotation found at the upper corner which was made by an unidentified former owner. This rare trial proof comes from the collection of the Haden scholar and collector, Sir W.R. Drake (1817-1890), whose collector's stamp, a armorial with a dragon, appears in the lower right corner of the sheet. We are grateful Antoine Rouillé d'Orfeuil for clarifying the states of Divergent Paths in Mia's collection.