Three Ethel Kirkpatricks at auction

I heard only this morning that Dreweatts in Newbury have three colour woodcuts by the British artist, Ethel Kirkpatrick, in their forthcoming sale on 10th February. As readers of long-standing will know, I admire Kirkpatrick and I would happily bid for at least two of these prints, but unfortunately, Dreweatts have decided to sell all three as one lot, which may mean they will all be knocked down to the trade. All the same, I thought it was well worth readers knowing about the latest development and seeing for themselves how the sale unfolds.

Kirkpatrick does not come up for sale all that often and although none of these prints are must-haves so far as I am concerned, she was such a subtle colourist and so good at what she did, at the right price, any of these are well worth buying. But how many people want three boat prints? The classic image is Brixham trawlers (above) from 1923 or 1924 (there were two versions). In common with many of her fishing-boat prints made of Cornish subjects before the first war, the main action is in the centre of the image and where most of the cutting is done. It may not look all that much here, but I can assure readers that once you have this print in front of you, its subtlety and attractiveness will be obvious.

Kirkpatrick almost certainly studied with Frank Morley Fletcher at the Central School of Arts and Crafts about 1899. She was a students of jewellery-making there at the time and I think these fine prints complement the jewellery she was learning to make. Her careful craftsmanship says a lot about the approach Fletcher took and like his, these prints are faithful to the traditions of Japanese printmaking. But Brixham trawlers has a vivacity, spontaneity and magic you could look for in Fletcher, but would not find. Like Seaby, Kirkpatrick became the master of the medium. Fletcher was too often its servant.

The canal (second from the top) from 1922 is closer to the kind of pictures Fletcher was making about 1908. The old imagism has been abandoned in favour of a description of the canal and the surrounding country. Again, it is very well-made and would grace any collection of colour woodcuts. It exists in another version which I have included (third from the top) although the one for sale is the best known. I am entranced as I always am by the hills and sky. This was where she was often at her most Japanese and perhaps her most successful. 

Finally, there is Communications, past and present from 1924. For me, this depends far too much on perspective and is my least favourite of all her prints, but it is nevertheless another very well-made piece of work. Interestingly enough, Alan Guest does not have this on his check-list, which must include all the work she exhibited with the Graver Printers from 1912 onwards. If you include her first watercolours, she had an impressive career of more than forty years, including her first visit to Newlyn in 1894 and her final colour woodcut exhibited in 1932. She made at least thirty-four prints, including the small colour linocut Marigolds, (though Alan Guest included one or two variants in his list). Even so, it is a fair old number and is probably equal to the output of William Giles and Arthur Rigden Read. It needs to be said that neither of them could claim to have worked from the mid-1880s onwards as she had done and, really, it is extraordinary that the span of her career covered such very different periods and that she nevertheless managed to hold her own. Whatever you buy then, almost every print is more than a mere persuasive sheet of enchantment.