Arthur Knighton Hammond 'Peveril of the Peak'

I picked this etching up many years ago in Newark, Nottinghamshire, partly because it was such a powerful period etching and partly because Hammond (1875 - 1970) came from Arnold near Nottingham and was related to my father's uncle. It is a landscape painter's etching, larger than most landscape etchings of the twenties, with a superb and unusual tone, soft and black like the background of a Ohara Koson woodcut and very different from the descriptive work of so many of the artist-etchers of the time. He made a few other etchings, but none of them as eloquent as this one. It is a classic Hammond pose if ever I saw one.

Hammond took evening classes at Nottingham School of Art when the sculptor, Joseph Else, was headmaster. (Another student of Else was James Woodford who worked with John Platt at Blackheath). Hammond eventually got fed up with the restrictive regime at the art school, but the rugged sculptural effect of the tower and rocks suggest what he learned from Else about form and how well he put it to original use in this etching.

William Peverel was part of local lore. A combatant at Hastings and claimed by William I as one of his sons, he died at Nottingham Castle on 17th April, 1115, but was buried at Calvados in Normandy. Peveril Castle is at Castleton in the unkempt northern wilds of Derbyshire. The lonely tower is Hammond's recreation and is much more appealing than his dutiful image of Haddon Hall near Bakewell.

Hammond moved to Stockport in 1914 and began making use of the etching press at Manchester School of Art. It would make sense if Peveril of the Peak was produced around that time. The tone of the one I have is remarkable. A good pastel of workmen on Long Row in Nottingham once turned up at my local auction-house and I tried to get my dad to buy it, though he failed to take the bait. The downside is the current Buy-it-now price on ebay. You could not properly put a value on an artist as modish and variable as Hammond was, but I would not pay £200 for any of his castles and I strongly suspect you won't either.