Ian Cheyne's 'The breakwater' at auction in Chicago

 

The great city of Chicago is many things but one thing it is not; it is not the Centre for Ian Cheyne Studies. A reader in Scotland told me on Monday about the current sale of Ian Cheyne's colour woodcut The breakwater in the city. Unfortunately, Hindman Auctions have chosen to use a handwritten description on the back of the picture that says the work is a colour linocut called 'The Great Wave'. Why it is hard to say. It is easy enough to discover the facts about Cheyne's print. Both the British Museum (above) and the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers (below) have correct description of Cheyne's print although the approach taken by the two institutions is different. The British Museum provide details of the inscriptions and of the work's provenance as well as giving the correct date for the first time it was exhibited. All we get from the Zimmerli is the title and a useful photograph of the complete proof. The British Museum's print was bought from them by the Contemporary Art Society in 1941 but we are given no clues about the Cheyne print at Rutgers which lacks the artist's signature as you can probably make out.

It may go without saying you will not find a signature on the Chicago proof either. It hails from the estate of the distinguished American photographer and philanthropist Lucia Woods Lindley and against all the conventions of framing an original print, 'The Great Wave' is mounted to the edge of the image, leaving everyone to conclude Cheyne never signed it. I am not suggesting there is anything wrong with the print. All I know is in the early 1980s, Alan Guest tracked down Cheyne's widow, Jessie Garrow, by the straightforward expedient of going through the Glasgow telephone directory. One result of his diligence was the London dealer Robin Garton visiting Garrow and buying a number of proofs. The artist died in 1983 and in the spring of 1986 twelve Cheyne prints went up for sale at the Alpine Gallery in Mayfair with seven bearing a violet studio stamp.  All the others were signed - and I am not suggesting they necessarily came from the studio. My own proof of Summer picnic came from Manou Sharma Levy on Portobello Road.

The curious thing is The breakwater was not one of them, leading me to wonder where these two unsigned proofs came from (and I admit I cannot be certain the Chicago print isn't signed). The only place Cheyne prints normally come up for sale now is in Scotland. Even by the standard of his contemporaries, Cheyne's editions were small and of the edition of only 20 for The breakwater, all were sold. Cheyne kept meticulous records of all the sales he made from 1925 onwards, though even here there are discrepancies because I have recently discovered there are at least two other colour woodcuts that do not appear on the definitive list. You may also ask yourself where I came upon one of the actual blocks for the print (above). I always believed all the surviving blocks were still in Glasgow but I was wrong. The four blocks made for what I want to call A bigger splash are all at Rutgers University.

I have to leave you to draw your own conclusions because I am not finished with Chicago. To give an idea of what was happening, I am going to quote from my own book. 'In December, 1929, Glen Cluanie (1929) and The fisherman's church (1929) were selected for the Art Institute of Chicago's Third International Exhibition of Lithography and Wood Engraving and yet again Cheyne's talent proved irresistible. Glen Cluanie was awarded the Brewster Prize as a meritorious print, with Cheyne selling eight proofs as the exhibition toured the U.S. As with Read at Los Angeles, originality had won out and it was soon apparent that the lowered blocks and graduated areas of colour first used in Summer picnic were to be the most original features of an unsurpassed series of Highland prints.'

The proof illustrated here is the Art Institute's own. As it is marked '6 proofs available for sale price $10' and the Institute's is 12/20, it appears Cheyne had already sold a further two at Chicago. This suggests Alans Guest's version (which appears in an unpublished essay about Cheyne) was misleading. It all goes to show once more that what we need is a full and proper catalogue of Cheyne's prints. Unlike Seaby, this is not a daunting task. The notebooks should still be in Scotland and there are new prints by Cheyne appearing online, including the etching owned by a fortunate reader, that present a different picture from the one in Cheyne's own well-kept accounts. 

The accounts are all very well but the fact is it is Ian Cheyne we know too little about not collectors, not least the ones in the United States, who were after all the people helping to support Cheyne. Following his success there, Cheyne and Garrow were able to marry and spent their honeymoon travelling in France and Spain. On their return to Glasgow, Cheyne then made Mediterranean bar, the best and most audacious art deco print ever made in Britain and one that has found a good home in a city famed for its art deco seafront. No, this time I mean Miami.

The post also includes Jessie Garrow's The wave and Eric Slater's Rough seas. Lots for the timed auction at Hindman end on 11th September, 2023.