$2.75 Prints

"For about three and a half centuries print-makers had been producing popular-priced prints in unlimited editions. About the middle of the last century a new trend began to emerge, the tendency to make prints more precious and expensive. The artist printed fewer and fewer proofs, limiting the total to from 25 to 100 and then destroyed the plate. And he charged correspondingly more for each proof because they were so few. Furthermore about 65 years ago it became customary for the artist to sign each print in pencil, no doubt to show that he approved of its quality. . . .

"None of the Old Masters issued prints limited to 100 proofs and signed in pencil. One never finds a Rembrandt etching, or a print by Duerer, Mantegna, Van Dyck, Goya, Turner, Delacroix or Daumier so signed and limited. These masters or their dealers printed impressions as long as people wanted them. . . ."

With this introduction an organization known as the American Artists Group last week presented its latest scheme to bring decent art at low prices to the U. S. public. Starting rather timidly last year with traveling exhibitions of prints and a show of Christmas cards designed by well-known artists and selling for 5-c--25-c- apiece (TIME, Sept. 16, 1935), the Artists Group last week was able to hang on the walls of Manhattan's Weyhe Gallery a collection of 53 original etchings, lithographs, woodcuts. Unsigned, unlimited, each one was priced at $2.75.

For that sum a purchaser had his choice of such particular bargains as two fine nudes by Emil Ganso, a crowded Coney Island beach scene by Reginald Marsh, a languorous Siamese cat by Agnes Tait, a lithograph of wild horses by last year's PWA discovery, Frank Mechau Jr., a group of bulbous people looking at other strange fish in an aquarium window by Mabel Dwight, a fine winter landscape by Ernest Fiene.

At the same time last week another artists' group, Living American Art, Inc. announced that for $5 apiece it was prepared to sell collotype* reproductions of a series of 48 pictures to be chosen annually by a jury composed of Artists Louis Bouche, Adolf Dehn, Alexander Brook, Hughes Mearnes. A small royalty will be paid to the artist on the sale of each print. Living American Art expects to do more than merely sell good reproductions at reasonable prices. A special shipping case has been designed in which twelve prints can be fitted without injury. Any reputable school in the U. S. may receive a case of prints four times a year to serve as a traveling art show, at no other expense than a promise to buy at least one $5 print from each exhibition.

*A color process too delicate for mass reproduction, in which thin sheets of gelatin instead of metal plates are used for printing.

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