Black Cherries

Black Cherries dates to around 1960, a period when Hamaguchi was consolidating his reputation in Paris as a revivalist of color mezzotint. The print depicts dark-skinned cherries—likely a variety such as Bing—isolated against an enveloping black ground. The addition of drypoint to the mezzotint base allows for crisp linear accents along stems and contour edges, supplementing the tonal richness of the mezzotint ground. Hamaguchi worked the copper plate with a rocker before selectively burnishing highlights, producing the luminous swell of each cherry's skin. The dual-technique approach was characteristic of his early-to-mid career experimental phase, before he settled into pure color mezzotint as his definitive medium.