I recently had an email from Gerbrand Caspers asking about a couple of prints that were up for sale marked RAM (you can see them on his latest post on The Linosaurus). Quite independantly, I came across the print of Sarajevo below signed by the artist Ralph Mott. Or not by the artist Ralph Mott would be nearer the truth.
The name is a pseudonym for the British graphics agency Ralph & Mott who employed various artists - hence the wide variety of styles. The cheeky people even got someone to sign it! Some dealers and price-sites even give him dates! Not that it's a bad image; and the poster above for the English Peak District is even more desirable (it looks like Wilkinson). As I was considering a post on the subject and I had the day off, I thought there was no time like the present. Once I saw Gerrie's post this morning, I was convinced his prints were from the same operators. The question is: who were the artists they employed? Now that would be interesting to find out. Back to you GC.
I recently had an email from Gerbrand Caspers asking about a couple of prints that were up for sale marked RAM (you can see them on his latest post on The Linosaurus). Quite independantly, I came across the print of Sarajevo below signed by the artist Ralph Mott. Or not by the artist Ralph Mott would be nearer the truth.
The name is a pseudonym for the British graphics agency Ralph & Mott who employed various artists - hence the wide variety of styles. The cheeky people even got someone to sign it! Some dealers and price-sites even give him dates! Not that it's a bad image; and the poster above for the English Peak District is even more desirable (it looks like Wilkinson). As I was considering a post on the subject and I had the day off, I thought there was no time like the present. Once I saw Gerrie's post this morning, I was convinced his prints were from the same operators. The question is: who were the artists they employed? Now that would be interesting to find out. Back to you GC.
I can give you one of Ralph & Mott's employees: Jenny Reyn (real name Edna Reynolds) joined the agency in the early 1930s and worked there until the outbreak of war, when the company closed "for the duration".
ReplyDeleteShe then worked as an animator for Halas & Batchelor 1940-46. In 1943 she married her boyfriend A E Clarke, and reluctanly stopped work when their first child was born, in 1946.
In the 1950s she worked freelance for the Kathleen Boland Studio, illustrating children's books and comics. She continued to work in this field into her 70s.
For more on Jenny Reyn (Edna Clarke, neé Reynolds 1913-1996) see:
http://bearalley.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/jenny-reyn-edna-clarke-nee-reynolds.html
and
http://halasbatchelor75.co.uk/how-i-came-to-work-for-halas-jenny-reyn/
Many thanks for taking the time to leave this information, Peter, on what was rather a slapdash early post. The links have proved invaluable and I can write a second post about the agency now and try to bring together all the stuff from different sources.
ReplyDeleteSome of the material from other blogs has of course gone up online since this was written in 2010. It was all harder to research five years ago. Perhaps mug up would be a more honest word than research but all the same there is far more information on the internet after only five years.
Thank you again. Charles