Interiors I: Family Reunion

1984. Resist ground etching and engraving on BFK Rives wove paper, 20 x 36 inches (501 x 913 mm), full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 49/175 in pencil, lower margin. In excellent condition with minor mat tone. A luminous, rich, and well-inked impression of this haunting image, with astonishing detail and depth. Framed handsomely under museum grade glass with archival materials in a solid wood frame with silver finish.

[Milton 107]. Intended to be a stand alone image in its inception, Family Reunion ended up spawning seven additional images, and became a sort of Primo Pensiero in the sprawling, masterpiece suite now known as Interiors. The suite took eight years to complete, and consists of works of varying format, psychological intensity, and subject matter. The thematic darkness in the eight images waxes and wanes, and Milton intentionally included several interlude works to lighten the tension he felt while composing several of the darker images. The first two in the series, Family Reunion, and Hotel Paradise Café, were meant to be companion pieces. The equilibrium of each composition is anchored on a central brooding figure; a man (perhaps based on a Thomas Eakins portrait of the American anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing), and a woman, respectively, each of whom engage in direct eye contact with the viewer. Often dark in theme, the images in the series are rife with portraiture, including a small image of Eadweard Muybridge's 1885 photograph, "Paralytic child walking on all fours," which can be seen hanging on the wall in the far background behind the central figure in Family Reunion. The series also includes several portraits of the artist himself at various stages in his life. Milton expresses in his notes regarding the series that one such portrait is meant to represent a microcosm of the world, "grand, filled with distractions and histories, sinking."

[Reference: Peter Milton, Complete Prints, Robert Fynn Johnson & Peter Milton, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1996, p.20].