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Frederick Landseer Griggs (1876-1938), Palace Court, 1933, etching, signed and inscribed in pencil. Reference: Comstock 49, third state (of 3), from the printing of about 75. In excellent condition, printed in a warm brownish/black ink on a cream laid paper with a “letters in a row” watermark.
Special presentation proof impression, dedicated in pencil by F.L.Griggs “To my friend H.J.F. Badeley”. Badeley was an accomplished original printmaker famed especially for his exquisitely engraved bookplates.
A fine impression.
In the first state (only 2 proofs) figures were yet to be etched, and in the lower margin was a dedication to Mary Anderson deNavarro, a American Shakespearean actor. In the second state (only 3 proofs) the group of figures in Tudor costume was added (13 figures plus a ghostly outline of a figure to the left of the group which appears to have been burnished out), the flagstaff and weathervane were added as well as the pigeons over the roof at the left. In the third state the bottom margin containing the dedication was cut off.
In a 1933 letter to Campbell Dodgson, Griggs wrote that this imaginary subject was “a kind of essay on East Anglican building – of mediaeval kinds, of course.”
