Leon Kossoff: The Testament of Eudamidas (after Poussin)

Kossoff engaged with Poussin’s narrative of a dying general distributing his wealth to his soldiers, not to retell the story, but to absorb its compositional gravity. By removing color and simplifying form, he sought the underlying rhythm of the scene—its emotional architecture. His focus was on the weight of line and the spatial tension between figures, revealing how Poussin’s discipline resonated with his own artistic concerns.

Kossoff treated the etching plate like a sketchbook, reworking it obsessively over months. He used drypoint and burin to build up thick, layered lines, often scraping and re-engraving the same plate after initial prints. The resulting impressions bear the traces of countless revisions, each state a record of his physical engagement with the image. The surface is dense, tactile, and deliberately imperfect.

The etching was developed in collaboration with printmaker Ann Dowker, who assisted in early proofs. Final editions were printed by Marc Balakjian at Studio Prints, known for technical precision. Kossoff retained hundreds of trial states, many of which remain in private and institutional collections. The work reflects his lifelong habit of returning to the same subjects, refining them through repetition rather than resolution.

In the 1990s, Kossoff joined a generation of British artists revisiting Old Masters not as homage but as dialogue. His etchings after Poussin, Rembrandt, and Veronese emerged alongside his continued focus on London’s urban landscapes. These prints reveal a quiet convergence: the same search for structure in classical composition and the chaotic energy of postwar city life.

Kossoff’s etchings after Poussin expanded the role of printmaking in postwar British art, demonstrating its capacity for deep, iterative inquiry. His process—marked by persistence, revision, and physicality—challenged notions of the finished print. The surviving proofs stand as a testament to an artist who saw technique not as a means to an image, but as a way of thinking through form.