I did wonder if the portrait of Isabel by Frances Dodd sold at auction last month was an unknown work. Not so. I have come across a copy of it in The Print Collector’s Quarterly, Oct 1926, vol. 13, no. 3, p243, titled ‘Lady Seated’, and with that information quickly located two copies at the British Museum, four at the Ashmolean Museum and one at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. Eight altogether, plus the 1926 illustration (top left).

Etching is not a subject I have any detailed knowledge of. There are descriptions on the Christie’s and MET web sites. I see now that the auctioned work (bottom right) was effectively a trial print. Other etchings by Dodd exist in various states of completion, but I have not found a completed version of this work, in spite of the statement in The Print Collector’s Quarterly (p264) that the plate “was subsequently carried a good deal further” – this appears to be a work Dodd left unfinished.

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Jonathan Russell

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