Frances Blair: woodcuts, linocuts and a check-list

                                                                        

It is now ten years since I posted on the Scottish artist, Frances Merritt Blair (1881 - 1954) and in that time no new images of her colour prints have appeared online (so far as I know). This obviously means that her work is rare and may help to explain why The brown sail (above) went for a relatively low price when it came up for auction in this country in the autumn.

I decided the best way forward was to publish a check-list of all the recorded colour prints made by this very attractive and able artist and to add any further details I have picked up about her career since I last wrote about her.

                                                         

It will not be much. She exhibited prints in Scotland, England, the U.S. and Australia between 1925 and 1946. Part of the time at least, she was working in Cornwall, with Helen Stevenson acting as contact from her home on Comiston Drive in Edinburgh. In February, 1926, Blair exhibited alongside Stevenson and Iain MacNab at the Society of California Printmakers and where Cornish cream shop (above), a depiction of Harris' dairy in Penzance in Cornwall, was bought by the Los Angeles Museum. In the November she became a member of the Society of Scottish Artists in their applied art section. There was also New colour woodcuts at the Grosvenor Gallery in Sydney in 1929 alongside two other stylish artists, namely Margaret Preston and Norbertine von Bresslern Roth.

Blair was working in Cornwall in the mid-twenties only and went back to live in Edinburgh where Jim Barnes has discovered various addresses for her. But that is about all the biography we have.

Cornish cream shop has been described as a linocut, but I cannot tell from the image what it is. No-one researching Blair has come up with any further references to lino. Nevertheless, it is still worth giving a basic rundown of what was happening in Scotland and England in regard to colour print. The early history of colour linocut for either country has not so far been published until now. So, here it is.

In 1921, Claude Flight made two colour linocuts, L'Arc de Triomphe and Trinity College and St. John's Chapel. The same year, there was an exhibition of child art (including linocuts) from the children's art class held at the School of Applied Arts in Vienna where the colour linocut artist, Hugo Henneberg, was a teacher. That same year, Dryad Crafts in Leicester published a pamphlet by Allen Seaby called Handprinting in colour. Probably Anna Hotchkis' Autumn in Galloway was made about the same time. The subject is Little Boreland at Gatehouse of Fleet. Hotchkis was a regular visitor to Kircudbright between 1915 and 1922 when she left Scotland to teach in China.

Following the child art exhibition, Flight radically changed style and made Trawler down the wave and Swing-boats (both 1921) using a vigorous, modern manner. In 1924, the Graver Printers in London showed colour linocuts for the first time, including de B. Lockyer's Near Vevey and Evening afterglow, Bordighera. The latter title is evidently influenced by William Giles who then asked S.G. Boxsius for an article about linocut for The Colour Print Journal in 1925 or thereabouts. This was never published, because the journal folded, but the same year Dryad brought out Seaby's Colour printing in linoleum and woodblocks.

Meanwhile, Glasgow became the first British school of art to put linocut on the syllabus when Chica McNabb included the medium in her course on relief print methods. This only ran between 1926 and 1927 when McNabb married and gave up work. That year, her brother, Iain, asked Flight to take a weekly class at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London. In 1927, Flight also published Lino-Cut. This was based on a series of articles he had written to promote the use of lino among artists rather than for use in schools and is the most important book written about linocut during the period.

The whole issue surrounding the use of wood and lino was beset with the kind of invective, snobbery and doctrinaire purism that the 1920s were so good at. It is in equal parts hilarious and infuriating.

Whatever the medium was Blair used, the approach is interesting. Look at the way she handles both the boats, the sail and the way she groups the houses across the bay. This way of looking at her subject was even more pronounced in her view of Harris' dairy in Penzance. The two prints are more mature than their faux naif style suggests. 

The check-list below has all the information available to me and includes contributions relating to English sources by Alan Guest from the 1980s while Jim Barnes recently supplied the same number of records for Scotland. For further information about the history of colour linocut, see the posts about Hugo Henneberg and Chica MacNabb.

Mousehole colour woodcut. Royal Scottish Academy 1925, Los Angeles 1926.

Cornish cream shop colour linocut, 1925. Los Angeles and Royal Glasgow Institute 1926. Illustrated The Studio, 1927, p 435.

The little bridge colour woodcut. Royal Scottish Academy and Graver Printers 1925.  

At the Trossachs Graver Printers, Royal Glasgow Institute and Los Angeles, 1926

The brown sail colour woodcut. Graver Printers 1927 and Royal Scottish Academy 1935.

The woods o' Dee colour woodcut. Royal Scottish Academy and Royal Glasgow Institute 1927, Graver Printers 1928.

Lairig Pass Royal Glasgow Institute 1927. 

Blue Waters of Lorne colour woodcut. Royal Glasgow Institute 1929, Graver Printers 1930, Royal Scottish Academy, 1935.

Old mill of Gairn Aberdeen Artists Society 1929.

Flamboyant trees colour woodcut. Graver Printers 1931.

Hen farm Colour Woodcut Society 1931.

Horse range gorze, New Zealand. Colour Woodcut Society 1931.

Up a hill in Devon colour woodcut. Royal Scottish Academy, Graver Printers, Colour Woodcut Society 1931, Royal Glasgow Institute 1932.

A lane in Devon colour woodcut. Royal Scottish Academy 1932.

East Lothian Aberdeen Artists Society 1932.

White sand, Morar colour woodcut  Royal Glasgow Institute 1932.

Evening, Morar  Colour woodcut. Royal Glasgow Institute 1934, Graver Printers 1935.

A Sussex mill  Graver Printers 1935.