It has been a good year for S.G. Boxius. To my surprise, not one but two unrecorded linocuts have turned up (The black bull and Unloading gravel) and we have been able to ascertain the correct title for The broken plough. The latter print has been familiar for many years as a small, poor image but now there is a much better one which I will include in another post. But nothing was more exciting than this excellent image of 'Wind'.
It is one of his calendar images from the series that includes Autumn, Winter, Early morning and Evening afterglow. The latter has a tittle straight from William Giles and attests to the mutual admiration between the two artists. But Wind is more a Giles image than the others. Its is the kind of long view of a distant monument or hill-top farmhouse surrounded by cypress trees that he liked. But what it also reminds me of is Paul Nash during the 1930s. Both Nash and Giles had imaginations that were attracted by the occult although Nash eventually towards surrealism.
I was tipped off by a reader only a few days ago who had come across four proofs of 'Wind' for sale at a Swedish auction in October, 2023. He tells me that despite a very low reserve the lot did not sell and the linocuts have not reappeared. What took me by surprise was not only the number of proofs in good condition, but the presence of working proofs by Ethel Kirkpatrick, including a fine image of Edinburgh Castle, which was discussed many years ago when it came up on Art and the Aesthete I seem to remember.
I would assume a Swedish collector was in touch with one of them and my conclusion is it may all be to do with William Giles who was a friend of both Boxsius and the Swedish-American artist, Bror Nordfeldt, and had visited Sweden in about 1903. But that is only a hunch. Suffice to say, here is another missing link in the tale of S.G. Boxsius and not before time.
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