Self-portrait in a cracked mirror

Richard Hamilton British

Not on view

While working with the printer Aldo Crommelynck in Paris on an illustration for James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), Hamilton found a small cracked mirror in the studio and made this self-portrait as part of an exploration of soft-ground etching. Peering above his reading glasses at his long, bearded face, he recorded the fractured image with an etching needle directly onto a metal plate covered with soft wax. The delicacy of the line and the presence of the artist’s fingerprints in the lower section indicate the receptiveness of the wax.

Self-portrait in a cracked mirror, Richard Hamilton (British, London 1922–2011 Oxfordshire), Etching and aquatint

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