Reflections on Minerva (Corlett 244)

A comic panel seen through glass

Reflections on Minerva is a 1990 print from Roy Lichtenstein's Reflections series, in which he showed images as if seen through a sheet of glass, with diagonal bands of glare cutting across them. The print is number 244 in Mary Lee Corlett's catalogue raisonne of his prints and RLCR 3941 in the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation's online catalogue.

The underlying picture is a comic-book heroine. The Foundation's catalogue identifies the source as Wonder Woman #32, dated November-December 1948, edited by Whitney Ellsworth, drawn by Harry G. Peter and written by Charles Moulton, the pen name of William Marston. One description of the print says the heroine raises a hand to her forehead in distress beside a speech balloon reading 'Merciful Minerva.'

Red and black diagonal stripes slash across her Ben-Day-dotted face. The point, as one writer puts it, is that the reflections, not the heroine, are the real subject of the print. They block the image the viewer came to see, the way glare on a framed picture does.

Roy Lichtenstein looks back

Lichtenstein was born in New York City on October 27, 1923. In 1961 he began painting pop pictures from cartoon images, borrowing the look of commercial printing; Look Mickey (1961) was his first work to use hard-edged figures and Ben-Day dots on a large scale.

Glass and reflection were not new to him. He started a series of Mirrors paintings in 1969. In the Reflections works of the late 1980s and 1990 he went further, laying the device of reflected light over his own earlier subjects: comic crashes, brushstrokes, girls from romance comics, and here a superheroine from the 1940s.

He returned to the comics nearly three decades after he had first used them, but this time the subject was partly hidden. The image announces itself as a picture of a picture, seen under glass the way a museum visitor might see one of his own canvases. Lichtenstein died in New York on September 29, 1997.

Eleven colors, twelve runs

The print was made at Tyler Graphics Ltd., Kenneth Tyler's workshop in Mount Kisco, New York. Tyler, a master printer, had founded Tyler Workshop Ltd. in Bedford Village, New York, in 1973; it became Tyler Graphics Ltd. the next year and expanded to Mount Kisco in 1987.

The Lichtenstein catalogue records an unusually complex build: 11 colors printed in 12 runs from 7 aluminum lithograph plates, 2 screens, 1 woodblock with inlaid magnesium plates and 1 plate assembled from 2 magnesium plates. Seven lithograph colors (yellow, light yellow, orange, green, red, blue and black) were printed on a flatbed offset press, followed by light blue and light green screenprints, a black relief run, a collage of silver metalized PVC plastic film and a final embossing.

The catalogue names nine workshop collaborators, including Kenneth Tyler himself on woodblock preparation, and the job split among them: lithography, screen printing, woodblock work, preparation of the metallic film and embossing. Two studies for the print, from about 1989, are also catalogued.

How to identify an impression

A genuine edition impression is printed on mold-made Somerset paper with a sheet of 42 by 51 3/4 inches (106.7 by 131.4 cm) and an image of about 90 by 116 cm. Sale descriptions give the sheet as up to 41 7/8 by 52 inches, small differences in measuring a large sheet.

Each is numbered, signed 'rf Lichtenstein' and dated '90 in pencil at lower right, with the Tyler Graphics chop as a blind stamp at lower right. On the back, at lower left, is the workshop number RL89-983 in pencil.

The edition is 68, plus 16 artist's proofs, one right-to-print proof, two printer's proofs (PP I and PP II), and two further proofs designated A and C. A printer's proof marked P.P.II, aside from the edition, was offered at auction in Dallas in November 2014.

The silver film is the fragile part. One condition report notes two tiny losses in the silver PVC area at lower left; others mention faint scuffs visible only in raking light.

Shows, museums and sales

The series was launched in October 1990 with overlapping shows at Tyler Graphics in Mount Kisco (October 13-November 30) and at a New York gallery (October 20-November 17), followed by San Francisco and, in 1991, Brussels. Since then the print has traveled widely: to Fukushima in 1995, to the National Gallery of Australia's The Big Americans in 2002-03, to a touring survey of Lichtenstein prints from 2005 to 2008, to Artist Rooms: Roy Lichtenstein at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in 2015 and later Tate Liverpool, and to Milan's Museo delle Culture in 2019.

Tyler Graphics gave an impression to the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1994, accession number 1994.67.6. In February 2025, marking the centennial of the artist's birth, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation gave a cancellation proof of the print, to the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.

On the market, one tracker counts 18 auction sales since the first in 2007. Impression 45/68 sold for $50,000 on October 29, 2008, an impression sold in Los Angeles for $43,750 on October 22, 2013, and impression 52/68 sold for $75,600 on October 28, 2022, above its $50,000-70,000 estimate. The same tracker reports hammer prices from GBP 43,368 in October 2022 to GBP 55,841 in June 2023. Impression 47/68 was offered at auction in 2012 and again in 2018.

Pop art, reflected

The Reflections prints are among the most technically demanding of Lichtenstein's late editions, and Reflections on Minerva shows why: a 1948 comic panel rebuilt with lithography, screenprint, woodcut, real metallic film and embossing, so that the fake glare is partly a real shine.

It also returns him to his own starting point. The comic-book heroine that made his name in the early 1960s comes back here, partly hidden behind reflections, as a comment on how familiar his images had become.

The numbers

Medium

Lithograph, screenprint, relief and metalized PVC collage with embossing on mold-made Somerset paper

Dimensions

Sheet 42 x 51 3/4 in. (106.7 x 131.4 cm); image 35 7/16 x 45 11/16 in. (90 x 116 cm)

Catalogue raisonne

Corlett 244; RLCR 3941 (RL 3744)

Edition

68; plus 16 AP, 1 RTP, 1 PP I, 1 PP II, 1 A, 1 C

Printing

11 colors in 12 runs from 7 aluminum plates, 2 screens, 1 woodblock with inlaid magnesium plates and 1 assembled magnesium plate

Public collections

National Gallery of Art, Washington, gift of Tyler Graphics Ltd., 1994.67.6; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (cancellation proof, gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, 2025)

Timeline

1. Oct 27, 1923

   Roy Lichtenstein is born in New York City.

2. Nov 1948

   Wonder Woman #32 (November-December 1948) is published; a panel from it later becomes the source for the print.

3. 1961

   Lichtenstein paints his first pop pictures from cartoon images.

4. 1969

   He begins the Mirrors series of paintings.

5. 1974

   Kenneth Tyler's workshop becomes Tyler Graphics Ltd.; it moves to Mount Kisco, New York, in 1987.

6. 1989

   Lichtenstein makes studies for the print; the workshop logs it as job RL89-983.

7. 1990

   Reflections on Minerva is printed and published by Tyler Graphics in an edition of 68.

8. Oct 13, 1990

   The Reflections series is shown at Tyler Graphics, Mount Kisco, through November 30.

9. Oct 20, 1990

   A second Reflections series show opens in New York, through November 17.

10. 1994

    Tyler Graphics gives an impression to the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

11. Sep 29, 1997

    Lichtenstein dies in New York.

12. Oct 4, 2002

    The print is shown in The Big Americans at the National Gallery of Australia, through January 27, 2003.

13. 2007

    First auction sale of the print, according to one market tracker.

14. Oct 29, 2008

    Impression 45/68 sells at auction for $50,000.

15. Oct 22, 2013

    An impression sells at auction for $43,750.

16. Mar 14, 2015

    Shown in Artist Rooms: Roy Lichtenstein at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

17. Oct 28, 2022

    Impression 52/68 sells at auction for $75,600, above its high estimate.

18. Feb 2025

    The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation gives a cancellation proof to the National Gallery of Australia for the artist's centennial.

The world in 1990

• Feb 11, 1990

  Nelson Mandela is released from prison near Cape Town after 27 years.

• Mar 18, 1990

  Thieves posing as police officers steal twelve paintings and a vase from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

• Apr 24, 1990

  The Hubble Space Telescope is launched aboard the space shuttle Discovery.

• Aug 2, 1990

  Iraq invades Kuwait.

• Oct 3, 1990

  East and West Germany reunify.

• Nov 28, 1990

  Margaret Thatcher resigns as British prime minister and is replaced by John Major.

• Dec 1990

  Tim Berners-Lee runs the first web server at CERN, with test operations beginning around December 20.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Reflections on Minerva (Corlett 244) is number 53 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (50 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The silver glare is not just ink: it is a collage of metalized PVC plastic film laid onto the paper.
• The source panel came from a Wonder Woman comic dated November-December 1948, thirteen years before Lichtenstein painted his first pop pictures.
• Each impression carries the workshop job number RL89-983 in pencil on the back.
• Lichtenstein's Mirrors paintings of 1969 anticipated the reflected-light device of this series by about two decades.
• A cancellation proof of the print entered the National Gallery of Australia in 2025, a gift marking the centennial of Lichtenstein's birth.
• The same impression, 47/68, was offered at auction twice, in 2012 and again in 2018.