I may as well begin with a stand-out linocut by Norbertine Bresslern Roth. Wolves is such an exquisite print when you see it in front of you, it would be hard to resist if you had £1,200 to spend on a work of art. Right now I don't but that doesn't matter because I was fortunate enough to pick it up at my local auction. I still remember the sharp intake of breath as I told Alan Guest over the phone what it was like and when he saw it later that morning, he simply said, 'You're right.' I say all thus because, as with all good prints, you need to see Wolves yourself to appreciate what a good work of art it is. It is not merely an imaginative design; it has the surface magic that all good prints ought to have.
This could not be said for William Neave Parker's colour linocut Lynx (1927). Don't get me wrong. I like everything Neave Parker ever did but he had no formal training and was not a maker of fine prints. Lynx is a well designed and neatly printed work but it comes from a book he published when linocut was just getting going in Britain and once you see Neave Parker's linocuts in front of you, the do not have the glamour that a print should have, so if you have £205 to spare, you would be better spending it elsewhere. Forty and fifty, maybe; two hundred knicker, no.
As for poor Allen Seaby, frankly, they have been scraping the barrel for years. There is nothing wrong with either Twins (above) or Dormice (below) but Seaby had already been at it too long and all he was basically doing was substituting other animals for birds when birds was what he liked and what he did best. They said this in the 1930s and it is still true now. And while I am at it, Twins is the correct title not Goats or The white kid or anything else dealers dream up.
Flight for Seaby had the same soft magic as pulling a proof. In his mind, lifting a proof from the block was no different from lifting a wing and no amount of interest in natural history or animal husbandry in general can make up for the less of his major subject. The awareness of the fleeting moment is where he has most in common with great printmakers like Hokusai or Hiroshige and that, I am afraid, is all there is to it. Stripping back off a tree or crawling through azaleas doesn't really do it though neither of these prints are pricey and I have considered buying Little blighters more than once.
You cannot go wrong with the bookplates of Alfred Peter. They are consistently good, consistently inexpensive though this one is over-priced at £23 considering the stains on the paper. It's a pity but it wouldn't put me off. Also some are signed and this one isn't and if you have nice signed examples, this one, for all its interest, would not make sense. Interesting though to see how much modern work was being done by 1912.
Last but far from least in S.G. Boxsius' calendar image Spring. I was tempted to add 'notorious' to the description, partly because it seems nigh on impossible to find a good image of this intriguing piece of work. None of this series (as you will know) were ever signed and I assume all of them were printed by students under Boxsius' supervision. Obviously what Boxsius wanted to depict was the peculiar light of an English spring and unless the photos are any good, they will not do the print much justice. But none of the available photos are any good and if you are tempted to pay out £295, remember this: the image here is the best one I have on file and not the one for sale. The one on ebay has nothing of the colour of this one, which is certainly well over-priced. But it has been a round for a long time and no-one will buy it now, I should think.
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