Despite the muscular robustness of the process that created them, the plates, with their fine detail and relative fragility, convey a delicate aesthetic. “That is the case with almost all printmaking,” Raftery says. “You have those giant presses and the pressure needed to make the prints, so it is this interaction between machines and people. But the focal point is always going to be that final work of art that has its own properties, its delicacy, its kind of presence in the world."
Raftery, who made his first print at age 11, grew up in Washington, D.C., surrounded by art. “My mother’s an artist, and I was just incredibly lucky to be in an environment where I had so much encouragement,” he says, “and constant inspiration with the National Gallery of Art there.” His immersive interest in prints and printmaking began at Boston University, where he studied engraving and attended exhibitions of works by such masters as 16th-century Dutch printmaker Lucas van Leyden and Italian Renaissance engraver Marcantonio Raimondi at the Museum of Fine Arts. Later, Raftery’s classes at the Yale Center for British Art, he says, “really solidified my love of British art that makes me so enthusiastic about The Huntington.”
Andrew Raftery, October: Bringing in Chrysanthemums, 2009–16, engravings transfer printed on glazed white earthenware, diameter: 12 1/2 in. (31.8 cm). The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Purchased with funds from Richard Benefield and John F. Kunowski. © Andrew Raftery.
When at Yale, studying the history of print with Richard Field at the Yale University Art Gallery, Raftery sorted through “50 boxes of prints a week”; as a faculty member at RISD, he went through hundreds of engravings as consulting curator for the RISD Museum’s 2009–10 exhibition, “The Brilliant Line: The Journey of the Early Modern Engraver,” a show featuring engravers from the late 15th to the mid-17th century. That constant contact with those masterpieces, he feels, “has honed my eyes and kind of raised the bar for what I hope to do in my own work.”
Raftery cites two 20th-century artists as influences for his “Autobiography” project: French engraver Jean Emile Laboureur, whose “landscapes, the way he simplified the foliage, helped me make such a breakthrough in doing this work”; and British artist Clare Leighton—specifically, her 1948 “New England Industries” wood engravings commissioned for a set of 12 Wedgwood plates (part of Raftery’s personal collection). Like Leighton, Raftery says, “I wanted my prints on ceramics to be fully pictorial, to use every tool that I have in composition and drawing and the use of the marks to make the images.”
Andrew Raftery, November: Digging Dahlia Tubers, 2009–16, engravings transfer printed on glazed white earthenware, diameter: 12 1/2 in. (31.8 cm). The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Purchased with funds from Richard Benefield and John F. Kunowski. © Andrew Raftery.
The Huntington’s acquisition of “The Autobiography of a Garden” was Raftery’s preferred choice, made possible by Richard Benefield and John Kunowski, who donated the funds for the purchase.
Having Raftery’s work at The Huntington “is kind of perfect for us,” says Melinda McCurdy, associate curator of British Art. Although the plates fit into the American collection, she observes, “they have been created using a technique derived from historic English ceramic ware, so that’s a link to our historic European ceramic collection, specifically the British collection. It is a nice way to be able to bring some American art into the European Gallery to make meaningful connections across the two collections. Scholarship is really paying more attention now to the similarities, and the exchanges, rather than simply the differences, between American and European art.”
Andrew Raftery, December: Contemplating the Snow, 2009–16, engravings transfer printed on glazed white earthenware, diameter: 12 1/2 in. (31.8 cm). The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Purchased with funds from Richard Benefield and John F. Kunowski. © Andrew Raftery.
“The Huntington is a wonderful place to experience British art, design, and decorative arts,” says Raftery. “I’m also very proud to be an American artist, and it’s so great to see the American artists featured at The Huntington. And then there’s just the unbelievable setting, with those buildings, and the gardens, and the range of experiences that are offered there. It’s unique among museums. It brings together so many things that I care about.”
Today, Raftery continues to cultivate his mother’s garden, and he is starting his own as well. “I’ve already planted probably a thousand little pots of seedlings,” he says, “and I’m getting ready to do a thousand more.”
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