One Cherry, 1958

Dated 1958, this impression of One Cherry falls within Hamaguchi's formative mezzotint decade: by this point he had been working in Paris since the early 1950s, experimenting with color mezzotint technique largely without instruction, and had begun to develop the distinctive deep-ground palette and spare compositional grammar that would characterize his mature work. A 1958 date positions this cherry among his earlier treatments of the subject, before the theme had become a signature. The single fruit, rendered by carefully burnishing a copper plate roughened with a mezzotint rocker, emerges from near-black darkness with a luminous highlight that functions as the composition's sole light source. The stem provides a fine linear counterpoint to the spherical fruit. At this stage of Hamaguchi's career the technique itself was still the primary subject as much as the cherry: each impression was a test of how much gradation could be extracted from the rocked-and-burnished plate before the highlights began to lose their bloom. The 1958 date makes this work a document of methodology as much as a still-life image.