The California Society of Printmakers were in the habit of not distinguishing between colour woodcut and colour linocut. Instead they referred to them collectively as colour block prints (and the same thing went for galleries like Brown Robertson in New York). This said quite a lot about the north American attitude towards colour print. I have always found many American prints to be more generic than the ones made by British contemporaries and it may help explain why, given the choice between a New Mexico idyll by Gustave Baumann, Watson's Misty morning and the stylish aplomb of Arthur Rigden Read's Cite de Carcassonne, the jury at the California Printmakers exhibition of 1926 gave the gold medal to Read, and this in a country where showmanship matters. Read simply beat the Americans at their own game. The question is why? It was not the first time and it was not to be the last.
In the first place, what the Minneapolis Institute of Art say about The explorers (top) (which they own) is worth taking into account. 'Ernest Watson spent his career exploring the limits of linoleum. In this strange scene he takes advantage of the medium's best attributes: its glass smooth surface, which allowed for even application of color; and its soft composition, which allowed for crisply detailed carving.' Now all of this can be true but what is ironic is an American reader who had bought a linocut by S.G. Boxsius wondered about the mottled surface of his print and you can only draw the conclusion that Boxsius did not think an 'even application of color' was always such a good thing. But without doubt it is in the distant details where Watson and Boxsius have so much in common. In other respects Watson's approach is more like Robert Howey or Oscar Droege and Minneapolis might have been closer to the mark if they had said that what linocut did best was 'effect'. But did Watson really make the best of lino as MIA suggest? Only compare the dynamic approach taken by Claude Flight and his students at the Grosvenor School and you can see an artist wanting to do something original with linocut.
It strikes me that a lot of what Watson did was not very different from the work some of his British contemporaries like E.A. Verpilleux, Eric Hesketh Hubbard or Howey were doing. The difference is Watson rarely depicted anywhere you could put a name to and even when he made a print of St Ives in Cornwall, the whole approach was too atmospheric for the place to matter. The plowman (above) is mainly an exercise in design, colour and brilliant and dramatic effect. No one would deny Watson's skill and seriousness, but it remains the work of a teacher whose job it was to impart a high level of skill to his students. This is true of teachers of fine art everywhere It doesn't matter where you go, their own work usually has the same problem. The real subject is skill. This is why the got the job in the first place. And this is why Watson is so fond of depicting workers. That is the way he saw himself I suspect.
Watson trained as a teacher of art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn (where the colour woodcut artist, Arthur Wesley Dow, was a teacher). He was then taken on at the Pratt as a teacher of design, drawing, perspective and composition in 1908 and remained until 1928. He met Eva Auld while she was training and after the couple married, he set up a summer school at Monterey in Massachusetts. This meant he spent almost all of the year teaching and even when he left the Pratt, he became an art editor on a journal. For me, all that shows. He never gave either himself or his subjects a chance to develop. Only compare the work of Edna Boise Hopkins who was another student at the Pratt to see what a wonderful American colour print artist can achieve.
Eva Auld Watson deserves a post to herself but you will not be surprised to hear the couple worked together and it is not always obvious whether print is by Eva or Ernest. It was the same with Hesketh Hubbard who sometimes collaborated with Frank Whittington. The style slips between fine art and commercial, not surprising when you consider some of Watson's students would go on to become commercial artists themselves. It still didn't mean he had to adopt a commercial style himself. Obviously, like Verpilleux's woodcuts, they were designed to look good framed on the wall. It is worth adding Verpilleux was influenced early in his style and choice of subject matter by the American etcher, Joseph Pennell, because what it all seems to amount to is 'International colour print style'. All very well done but lacking the finesse that gives colour prints their allure.
The only Watson print I have ever seen in front of me was one for sale on the High St in Oxford. It was large, impressive and relatively expensive and I reluctantly left it behind. This only meant a visiting American could come along and take it back home. And why not? Americans have always thought far more of their own colour print artists than the British have when it comes to their own. Not only that. They also tend to think more or ours, too. So, I can say what I like about Watson. It will not put them off. And quite rightly so.
No comments:
Post a Comment