'Crow was so much blacker/ Than the moon’s shadow/ He had stars.'
— Ted Hughes, from ‘Crowcolour’ in Crow, 1973
Etching with aquatint, on Somerset wove
Signed and numbered from the edition of 80 in pencil
From Nine London Birds
Printed by Culford Press, London
Published by the Byam Shaw School of Art, London
Plate: 22.4 × 18.7 cm (8.8 × 7.3 in)
Sheet: 40 × 29.3 cm (15.7 × 11.5 in)
Rosenthal 107
In excellent condition
Frame: 48.8 × 37.8 cm (19.2 × 14.9 in)
‘The Crow’ was Rego’s contribution to ‘Nine London Birds’, a fundraising portfolio in support of the Byam Shaw School of Art. The portfolio included works by Maggi Hambling, Prunella Clough and Patrick Caufield among others. Here, against a background of three very attentive cats in various attitudes of awe and fear, a singularly insouciant crow stands on a table with a paint tube on the corner, as if in some way the unseen artist is paying tribute to the bird's undoubted majesty. The deep black against the almost crystalline white of the beak and the tiger stripes of the cats is very striking.
— T. G. Rosenthal, Paula Rego: The Complete Graphic Work (London: Thames & Hudson, 2012), 104.
