Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

Born in London, Valerie Thornton was evacuated to Canada during the Second World War, before returning in 1944, following which she trained in art at the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting from 1949. In 1954 she undertook an eight-month residency with S. W. Hayter at the Atelier 17 in Paris. On her return to England she purchased her first etching press. After a six-week grand tour of Italy in 1955, she succeeded Howard Hodgkin as Assistant Art Teacher at Charterhouse School, also teaching at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing at Benton End, Hadleigh. She did a ten month residency at the Pratt Graphic Art Center Workshop in New York and a trip to Mexico in the early 1960s, where she experimented with woodcuts. In 1965, she became a founder-member of the Printmakers’ Council. Thornton moved to the Minories in Colchester in 1966, after marrying Michael Chase, who had been appointed curator there. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter/Etchers and Engravers in 1970. In 1974, she settled in Chelsworth, West Sussex; thereafter followed regular summer working trips to Spain, France and Italy in search of Romanesque material for her etchings.

Places

Italy, Florence, Tuscany

Subjects

topography, townscape/cityscape, river, bridge (urban), house, dome, tiled roof, tower

Materials & Techniques

etching, aquatint

Artist

Valerie Thornton (1931 - 1991)

Title

Ponte Vecchio, Florence

Edition

27/60

Date

1972

Medium

Etching and aquatint

Acquisition

Purchased from Editions Alecto, January 1973

Inscription

below image: [left] 26/50 [centre] Ponte Vecchio, Florence [right] Valerie Thornton 72

GAC number

9978