Wednesday 14 December 2011

Sydney Lee: colour woodcuts


Sydney Lee (1866 - 1949) is the kind of artist who often interests me because they don't seem to quite fit in with the general pattern of things. And I always find there's something almost maladroit about his work, which seems to go with the individualist trend. He was brought up in Prestwich in Manchester and went to the school of art there (where I think Walter Crane was principal) and then made the move that was almost inevitable for people of his generation: he went to Paris. He trained at Colarossi's and once back in England, he became a habitue of art colonies in true European style: Walberswick, Staithes and, as you can see here, St Ives, in Cornwall.

The Sloop Inn shows a public house that was popular with artists. How much time he spent there, I do not know but he dud spend alot of time in St Ives in the mid/late 1890s. This print dates from 1904, a very early date for a British colour woodcut of this kind. Teaching of the Japanese method had only begun seven years before he made this print, so this places Lee at the start of the colour woodcut movement, along with Royds, Seaby and Giles. He was certainly no slouch.


As images go, it is classic Lee: a night scene that gives him the opportunity to make use of muted colours. It looks pretty straightforward, but the perspective is handled with subtlty. Nothing is aloowed to disrupt the intriguing mood. And I am quite sure, looking at this and other colour prints by Lee, that his skill and lyricism was recognised by Sylvan Boxsius who used the same combination of blues and pale orange light for his linocut Winter over twenty-five years later. (I think Boxsius also adapted Lee's print of Whitby - and improved on it, as you have to do).


Boatbuilding, St Ives certainly lets us know he knew the work of Henri Riviere. There is a similar naive draughtsmanship which comes across as more sophisticated in the Frenchman than it does here. All the same there is a lovely balance of tone and colours and no sign of his favourite colour - blue. This was also a subject that another artist also tackled.(See The definitive Ethel Kirkpatrick). She would certainly have known Lee through their mutual visits to St Ives and also as habitues of the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. Kirkpatrick took part in the first student exhibition after the founding of the school in 1897 and I strongly suspect that both Kirkpatrick and Lee attended Frank Morley Fletcher's trailblazing classes there. Fletcher moved on to Edinburgh in 1907, fatefully handing the class over to Lee. He continued to teach colour woodcut in the Japanese manner but by the time Noel Rooke took over from Lee a few years later, the class was set to become the crucible for modern British wood-engraving and Lee himself is primarily known as wood-engraver today. Like Emil Orlik and LH Jungnickel, Lee gave up making colour woodcuts after only a few years and by the time the Society of Graver Printers in Colour came into being in 1909, Lee was not amongst the founding members.

                                                                         
The image above also looks to me like one of his earliest. If it's by far the most French of the prints and not the kind of image many colour woodcutters would go on to make, it also suggests he knew the pictures of young men that Henry Scott Tuke was painting in Falmouth . It doesn't quite work as image for the medium in much the same way that John Dixon Batten's choice of subject may strike us now asn inappropriate. But this onlt shows that both artists were not prepared to simply follow Japanese conventions. Interestingly, both went on to other things soon afterwards. The use of blue here also reminiscent of early Batten and I wonder whether the figure of the half-submerged boy had found its way into the woodcut from Seurat's Bathers, Asnieres in the National Gallery. Needless to say I am deeply grateful to Robert Meyrick who sent me this fascinating print. (All three belong to him and anyone who missed the two St Ives images at auction in Germany earlier this year will probably never get the chance again). Mabel Royds was the only colour woodcut artist who went on to tackle male figure subjects with any seriousness and this woodcut of Lee's is as rare as any of them get.


                                                                               



10 comments:

  1. Hi Charles,

    it feels great to read your posts again after a little break, inspiring and interesting as always. I hope you are well!

    Lee's The Sloop Inn is wonderful! I saw it was on sale at the German auction house, but it wasn't exactly cheap, as far as I remember. Anyway, it makes sense that Lee returns to England.

    The subject of people in woodblocks is an interesting one. Many artists seem to avoid to depict people, I think I can also understand why. The woodblock print doesn't seem to be the right medium to bring out a person's individuality, in most cases, at least. I think Lee's print is also reminiscient of some of Walter Philipp's works. Philipps often showed his children in his prints and is remarkably sensitive in these works, avoiding any kind of "sweetness" and bringing out some of the quarrels of adolescence. Another, quite similar example would be R.L.Howey's print "Bluebells", which I love.

    greetings!

    Klaus

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  2. Klaus, we don't always agree but we do agree about The Sloop Inn.

    I wondered whether you had seen the Lees. The St Ives prints all went for about €300, which is quite alot for a British colour woodcut. But they seem to be pretty rare and there are very few online.

    I think the reason they found their way to Germany was through the Books & Graphics Fair at either Leipzig or Dresden (it was whereever Siegfried Berndt studied). Other Briitsh contemporaries of Lee's exhibited there.

    Nudes are unusual in colour woodcut but Orlik did a series of good portraits of people he knew. The Austrians realised it was much better suited to animals as a medium. In Jungnickel's hands they did become portraits. John Platt did some of the best figure subjects amongst British artists but Mary Fairclough did some good linocut portraits, especially her wonderful gypsey woman with the pipe!

    Charles

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  3. Surely there's one artist who wasn't afraid of cutting and showing people in his prints too. Following in the footsteps of August Lepère. And he did the most intimate and individual of portraits too. I'll show them soon. Gerrie

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  4. The point is this: Mabel Royds was the only colour woodcut artist I can think who trained at the Slade and the Slade was famous for its emphasis on drawing from life. Her prints of semi-naked Indian men are highly unusual but the Slade is where it began.

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  5. Maybe leonhard Fanto from Dresden would be another example. I think he is very remarkable for his use of colour and his empathetic portraits. At the risk of disagreeing with Charles again, I prefer them to Royds' Indians. I think Royds' plants are her best works, for example the "Grapes".

    Klaus

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  6. In fact, Klaus, I much prefer Royds later work (the flowers etc) to the Indian prints as well.

    I wasn't talking about portraits. But I think some of the the flowers have a kind of nudity, which may make me sound like DH Lawrence.

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  7. Funny you're saying that, Charles: when I look at Royds' and O'Keeffe's flowers, I always have to think of "Bavarian Gentians".

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  8. Lawrence described Lady Chatterley as looking like a Gloire de Dijon rose. He meant the tints and petals of the flesh I suppose. But that does also suggest there is more to Royd's Indian prints than meets the eye.

    Charles

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  9. I'm not so sure about that: I can relate Royds' "Magnolias" to Lawrence's "Bavarian Gentians", but I can't relate her Indian prints to "Lady Chatterly"!

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  10. Probably just as well.

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