Thursday 19 July 2012

Robert Gibbings del et imp

                                                                              
When the critic and writer Malcolm Salaman said, 'Mr Robert Gibbings is leaning experimentally towards the Japanese convention,' he was already inured to Gibbings' changeableness and had no doubt learned to approach his changes-of-heart with caution. (Gibbings had suffered from depression and a lack of concentration for some time after he had been wounded in action in 1915). Salaman might not have been thinking about this exact print  when he said what he did, but Play is the most Japanese of the very few colour woodcuts that Gibbings made. It is also the least serious.

For anyone that only knows Gibbings through his wood-engravings, this print is just as disconcerting as his first colour woodcut Retreat from Serbia (which I featured some while back). Both prints seem to come out of the blue. The key to this one at least may perhaps be found in the cheeky little seal.


                                                                    
At the top you see his own convoluted initials, RJG, below the initials SL in the shade of a stylised tree. This lower part of the seal is a straightforward parody of Frank Morley Fletcher's own seal (although Fletcher doesn't sit his own MF in the shade, more's the pity). Fair enough. But who is Serj Lapin?

When he made the woodcut, he was clear about the collaboration by saying it was between Serj and R Gibbings, and number 5 in the edition (of 75) was marked S Lapin del.: so there is no great consistency and when it comes to what has been described as a nursery print, you wouldn't probably expect that. But this is satire, a parody of the extravagent lengths that printmakers went to in order to achieve their Japanese look. I don't have an image of Yoshijiro Urushibara's own double rabbit logo used on his Ten Woodcuts (and it came out a few years after this, probably) but you will see the possibiltities with another print you may well have seen here on this blog, or elsewhere.

                                                                       

Urushibara's early prints are hard to date, but I can't help but feel the habit of Frank Brangwyn and George Clausen adding their signatures to work both cut and printed by the Japanese artist is partially the focus of his mockery. But of course, there was only one Robert Gibbings ever, and he was the sole author of this print. The clever geometry is Gibbings as only he knew how, and as Salaman went on to say, he was making these experiments 'with a view to a fuller colour range'. The colours of his earlier woodcuts were restricted and by the third one the whole idea was looking  jaded as the Irish would say themselves. But he was only semi-serious. It seems this print and its partner, which I have never seen, lie somewhere between Albert Bridge, Chelsea and Walthan St Lawrence in Berkshire where he moved to  run the Golden Cockeral Press in 1923. He never did anything else in colour after this and so perhaps he hadn't missed Urushibara's real lesson: how much you can do with  small amount of pink and alot of black and white.



                                                                               

13 comments:

  1. Sorry to veer off-topic here, but I was wonderin whether you (or any of your well-informed and eagle-eyed readers) have any experience with the work of James Alphege-Brewer? I recently identified a woodcut print from my collection as one of his pieces. It took me forever because his signature is virtually illegible.

    I've done some preliminary snooping around and he seems mostly to have produced architectural etchings. But he also made a relatively small number of rather painterly woodcuts. Beyond that he doesn't seem to have been much written about.

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  2. Hi, Anthony. I think you must have missed the discussion that included Brewer between Clive and myself fairly recently. Clive has bought his woodcuts and there was a post on Art on the Aesthete but as you probably know,the blog is now down for good.

    Brewer came from an arty Kensington family, the son of the painter Henry Brewer, trained somewhere or other (possibly the Kensington Schools), then married into another arty family. Both his wife and brother-in-law, Edwin Lucas, were artists. They all lived together in Acton. So far, so Victorian.

    As you say, he's best known for his spindly architectural set-pieces, which were a staple of British provincial sale-rooms. The woodcuts have more appeal but are oddly timeless. He avoids anything as demanding as a keylock, depth, or even a real subject, and they end up looking as you also quite rightly say painterly.

    They do come up on ebay now and then. No doubt if I do a post, they will double in value. Don't hold your breath.
    And remember, you read it here first.

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  3. Thank you for the response! Yes, I did miss your discussion with Clive. I'll have a root around and see it I can find it.

    I broadly agree with you. I actually picked the print up in a junk shop for £15 where it was listed as a watercolour by an unknown artist. I could tell it was a print (just!) and that it was more than £15's worth, but it's only just now that I've found out who the artist was. It currently hangs in the dining room alongside an Oscar Droege (also picked up cheap - an illegible signature can be a wonderful aid to getting things for not a lot of money) and an R. L. Howey and it's by some margin the weakest of the three pieces. That said, I think it's got something about it. Having looked at some of his other work, I think there's a real variation in quality. His best pieces, to my eye at least, have something of Japanese sumi-e ink work about them. His lesser pieces suffer from quite uninspired composition and/or an insipid colour palette.

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  4. They have that wan nymphs-and-shepherds look to them. The broad treatment, though, gives the game away. Many were churned out, hence the varying quality. But no doubt as you pause over pudding, you will enjoy that winey dappled sunlight he is actually quite good at. It's as good as a signature. His work couldn't be by anyone else.

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  5. for sale by bamfords derby ,13,14,15th march 2013, a similar print to ( del et imp ) but of a vagrant dog ,.

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  6. Very interesting. I wondered why this post was getting so many views.

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    1. hi everyone, you will be able to see an image of the (vagrant hound ) on the 27th feb on bamfords of derby web site ,. ps hope its ok to post this on your web site . thanks ?

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    2. Only if you acknowledge me on yours.

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  7. I love the bunny. I want to take him and make a whole set of plates!

    I one time on japonisme ran an image that I remember to be very similar to that strabge chop-like signature up there, but I couldn't find it. It would be so interesting ig they're
    the same.

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  8. The answer's in the text, Lily, at a guess.

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  9. Yeah--that's why I have to become obcessed with finding it.

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  10. But neither of these images were online till I put one up and the auction-house put up the other. Gibbings stamp is a parody of Morley Fletcher's.

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  11. I have the other, the one of the dog (?) with a rucksack. Same chops

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