Cattle Drovers, Tunisia
Information
This drypoint was drawn directly onto the plate from life, at the famous UNESCO world heritage site of Dougga.
Dougga/Thugga used to be a small Roman settlement, the archaeological site is considered the best-preserved example in North Africa. Martin visited Tunisia with the idea to use the visit in preparation for his return to Yemen to make the plates for Tim Mackintosh-Smiths first book Yemen; Travels in Dictionary Land. The plate was intended to be etched on return from Tunisia, but it remained un-etched and un-printed until ten years later when the hard ground was removed and it was discovered that a lot of the fine drawing had remained on the plate, so it was subsequently printed as a drypoint.
Although there was a superb print room at the RA Schools, Yeoman felt there was little time during his four years at the Schools to take himself away from the life drawing and painting rooms to devote enough time to the practical understanding of prints and printing. That came later after Yeoman was asked to provide etchings for Tim Mackintosh Smith's book 'Yemen Travels in Dictionary Land'. He then started attending Morley College and learnt everything he knows now about the subject from the printer Frank Connelly.
Further reading
“Returning to the usefulness of drawing. We can only guess at what early man had in mind when he drew on a cave wall. Whoever made these drawings had a keen eye, a brilliant memory, imagination and a refined sense of line, everything, in fact, you need now. Perhaps what gave those earliest drawings their importance was the need to communicate and explain what they saw. This visual language is the same for us today, it is a language that goes back 30,000 years or more and may well have been the first language of man.”