The colour woodcuts of Edith Richards

 

                                                                               

I am not sure why I have never got around to the work of Edith Richards. At one time, colour woodcuts by her could be found online but lacking attribution, like the one of foxgloves above. We were all left guessing. What I can say now is she was born in Cardiff in 1868, and spent time in various places, including Epsom, an affluent area  near London, where she lived with family. 

She also spent time in Cornwall from about 1910 to 1921. By the looks of the large blocks of stone in the print above, this one dates from her time in Cornwall the print above. She obviously trained, because these are properly-made woodcuts, particularly the flower images, which she made in the full Japanese manner. All of the ones here betray the influence of Sidney Lee who worked in Cornwall from the late 1890s onwards and also taught colour woodcut at the Central School in London from 1906. As it happens, I have a black-and-white photocopy of a colour woodcut called Outside the village shop dated 1909, so it is always possible she took Lee's class.

She was a member of the Colour Woodcut Society and exhibited with them and the Graver Printers from 1909 until 1934, including Aigues Mortes (1926) and A Benedictine barn in Greater London (1934), a title that confirms that she had an original point of view (as you can see from the two flower prints here). Yet again, we have a printmaker with a sculptural sense of form. Hence the great blocks of granite!

The four prints held by the National Gallery of Scotland were donated by the collector, Jim Ede, who was born at Penarth near to Cardiff where Richards had grown up. He also trained at Newlyn between 1912 and 1914, so it may be he bought them directly from the artist in Cornwall.  (Ede met his wife in Edinburgh and they went to live there in 1973.)

Richards died at Islington, London, in 1955.