Henri IV, L'épaulière gauche
Print
2002 (made)
2002 (made)
Artist/Maker | |
Place of origin |
In 2002 Australian artist Raymond Arnold made a suite of eight etchings in response to a painting he saw in the Louvre of Henri IV of France in full armour. The series was also inspired by a trip to First World War graves in France, where his grandfather and many other young Australian men died in action.
In each print Arnold depicts one of the component parts from a suit of armour against a ground of synthetic lace. The armour is overlaid with a traditional Provencal textile design that goes back centuries but is still found on today’s French market stalls. The sense of both strength and vulnerability evoked by the armour plays against the associations of the lace and the traditional pattern: delicacy but ‘cheapness’, implicit expendability and working-class origins. The images bring together a variety of themes including war, violence, the fragility of the male body, the use of young working-class men as gun fodder in the war, and collective memory.
In each print Arnold depicts one of the component parts from a suit of armour against a ground of synthetic lace. The armour is overlaid with a traditional Provencal textile design that goes back centuries but is still found on today’s French market stalls. The sense of both strength and vulnerability evoked by the armour plays against the associations of the lace and the traditional pattern: delicacy but ‘cheapness’, implicit expendability and working-class origins. The images bring together a variety of themes including war, violence, the fragility of the male body, the use of young working-class men as gun fodder in the war, and collective memory.
Object details
Category | |
Object type | |
Title | Henri IV, L'épaulière gauche (assigned by artist) |
Materials and techniques | Etching and soft-ground etching on paper in yellow and black |
Brief description | Soft ground etching 'Henri IV -L'épaulière gauche' by Raymond Arnold, France, 2001. |
Physical description | Etching in yellow and black as wide as the sheet on which printed but with margins at top and bottom. Image of the left shoulder piece of a suit of armour, decorated with a small oval star-like pattern and set against a lacy background on the left and on the right of plate a simple woven line pattern. The tone of the colour in a central strip of the print is darker than two strips on either side. |
Dimensions |
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Production type | Limited edition |
Copy number | 5/15 [second state] |
Marks and inscriptions |
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Credit line | Purchased through the Julie and Robert Breckman Print Fund |
Subjects depicted | |
Places depicted | |
Summary | In 2002 Australian artist Raymond Arnold made a suite of eight etchings in response to a painting he saw in the Louvre of Henri IV of France in full armour. The series was also inspired by a trip to First World War graves in France, where his grandfather and many other young Australian men died in action. In each print Arnold depicts one of the component parts from a suit of armour against a ground of synthetic lace. The armour is overlaid with a traditional Provencal textile design that goes back centuries but is still found on today’s French market stalls. The sense of both strength and vulnerability evoked by the armour plays against the associations of the lace and the traditional pattern: delicacy but ‘cheapness’, implicit expendability and working-class origins. The images bring together a variety of themes including war, violence, the fragility of the male body, the use of young working-class men as gun fodder in the war, and collective memory. |
Associated objects |
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Collection | |
Accession number | E.2094-2004 |
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Record created | May 12, 2004 |
Record URL |
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