The woodcut (above) belongs to a reader who was fortunate enough to acquire the proof inscribed to the artist Marion Gill and her brother, Edwin. It is called Boston from the river or Boston Stump. Either way, readers will recognise the clarity of the style of S.G. Boxsius. It shows the tower of the church of St. Botolph and the harbour on the tidal reach of the river Witham. Straightforward enough but you will know from the previous post that Edith Hope included the same tower in her view of Boston market-place. It is a famous landmark. When children were getting restless on the train on their way to Skeggie, they were urged to look out for Boston Stump - and here it is, a monument to a moment, as D.G. Rosetti put it.
Much as I like Hope's image, I prefer this one. It is Rice at her best - colourful, intelligent, observant. Beyond that, this particular proof is a record of the importance of friendship in her life. We can probably safely assume Hope had visited Boston alongside Rice but by the time it was inscribed in 1931, the Gills were both in Cape Town where Edwin Gill had been appointed director of the South Africa Museum in 1924 and the following year Rice's daughter Rosemary and son-in-law, Charles Hawthorne, moved to Cape Town too. (Their son was the British character actor, Nigel Hawthorne, who was three at the time of the move). She had begun exhibiting with the Colour Woodcut Society after the war and with the Graver Printers from 1929 onwards. Nevertheless Festival, above, (as well as some of her other prints) suggests the kind of colour woodcuts made before the war. Like Allen Seaby and Frank Morley Fletcher, her sister Amy, her husband, and herself were all involved in education where art played an important role.
In 1893, Amy and her husband, J.H. Badley, were two of the four joint-founders of the co-educational and non-denominational school, Bedales. There was a strong emphasis on the arts - the singer Lily Allen, the artists Ivon Hitchens and Stephen Bone, and Sir John Rothenstein, director of the Tate, were all ex-pupils. Unfortunately, the biographies I have read are contradictory. Rice herself married Charles Rice who I believe was headmaster of King Alfred School in north London. This was founded in 1898 and was again run along secular and co-ed. lines. Likewise, there was a strong bias to the arts. (The influential British blues musician, Alexis Korner, and Paul Kossoff, sublime guitarist with the band Free, were former pupils.) Like Gill and Hope, Rice trained at the Slade School of Art and according to one account she and her husband eventually left London and became teachers at Bedales. You will not be surprised when I tell you that Rice was also a feminist and when she organised an exhibtion of the work of members of the Colour Woodcut Society at Bedales in 1928, many of the artists, including Ethel Kirkpatrick, Frances Blair, E.C.A. Brown and Mary MacDowall, went on to feature in Modern Printmakers, although Dorothy Langlay, is yet to have her turn.
The other story says that Charles Rice trained to be a doctor during the war and bought a practice in Coventry. Garrett Rice was already in Petersfield (where Hope also lived) by 1928 and in 1931, Charles Rice retired, sold the practice and the couple separated. Their daughter moved to Cape Town the following year and by 1934 Rice was exhibiting South African subjects with the Graver Printers. She lived in S.A. for the rest of he life. Aside from making prints, she became a botanical illustrator and books containing her work like Wild flowers of the Cape of Good Hope are still available. I wish this was the case with her colour woodcuts. I have a record of only thirteen and I have decided to post what I think are the strongest. The image I have of Misty morning (1933) is too pale to put up and others like Old sheep bridge, Norfolk, The snow storm (both 1929) and The bonfire (1928) remain untraced but must be somewhere. Fortunately, there is enough variety here for readers to gain an idea of what Rice could do. I would not say 'No' to any of them. If the style of The bather is self-conscious, the bathing cap and robe are nicely-chosen. It is also a rare female nude by a colour woodcut artist. Who the subject was we all naturally would like to to know. I have given a list of possible names and I leave you to make up your mind.
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