Daisy Boxsius, wife of the artist

                             

Usually married women who have careers as artists make use of their maiden name. Jessie Garrow (who was married to Ian Cheyne) is a good example and an even better example would be Ada Shrimpton who married William Giles when she middle-aged. Her drawing of a magpie is signed Daisy Tuff and has the impressed mark 'ESK' which means it was part of an exhibition of her work at the government art school at South Kensington in London. One she had qualified, she became a teacher and was still working when she married Boxsius at St James, Muswell Hill, in July 1917. Unlike his wife, Boxsius gave his profession as 'artist' even though he always earned a living as a teacher; and like Mary Batten, Daisy signed work with her married name.

So far as I know, this is the first article to be dedicated to her work, and with reason, because going by the few drawings I have been able to find, she was as good a draughtsman as her husband. Once they are married we can see them literally working side by side in the Arts and Crafts partnership of the kind exemplified by Mary Batten and John Dixon Batten. The viewpoint of the parish church of Stoke in Teignhead, Devon, is not exactly the same as the viewpoint taken in her her husband's linocut A Devon village (below); Daisy is higher, resulting in a more complex image, though it is obviously the same place. What both works have in common is the bold, faux-naif manner widely used by artists after the war

The inscription means we not only know the subject of A Devon village is Stoke in Teignhead, we can be sure the visit was part of a trip made in the summer of 1921 and provides further confirmation that S.G.B. made use of his sketchbooks for many years. No linocuts were made until the mid twenties and A Devon village was not exhibited until the early thirties.

This takes us back to the subject of her examination work. Magpies are notorious thieves and so are artists. S.G.B.'s apparent loans from his wife's sketchbooks are complicated by his disregarding of the facts. You will notice the shade of the roofs of the cottages at Stoke in Teignhead are the same as the roofs at Arundel (below). The problem is the Devon roofs are thatched and could not be pink. Nor could they be purple, the colour he used for another version. He simply decided he could try the same shade his wife had used because when he came to make his linocut Spring morning, Arundel, the shade of the same roofs is different from hers. 

Daisy is in the shade cast by a pub and looking over the bridge while her husband's viewpoint is from across the river and looking directly at the row of half-timbered buildings. Both the similarities and the differences are instructive. One remains a fine artist, the other has become a designer as so many other graduates of the Royal College of Art did, especially if they were not accepted onto the fine art course.

For Boxius, the castle was an opportunity to give the print a theatrical backdrop that makes it look like E.A. Verpeilleux, a shame because it remains one of his best-considered prints. I still remember my friend, Alan Guest, (who was fortunate enough to own it) describing the way Boxsius had combined colours to achieve a gradual sense of distance. Generally, it goes from warm to cool hence his decision to use orange rather than pink. Also, notice the way his wife introduces shapes without detail in the same way Boxsius does with the blue rooftops.

The final drawing is inscribed  'Shaldon Bridge from the sands August 27th 1921' so it was drawn during the same trip to Devon and judging by the date towards the end of their holiday. It shows if nothing else that Daisy was keeping her hand in and was still working with great attention even though her student days were behind her. The year before, Boxsius had been appointed Art Supervisor at Bolt Court but the couple were still living at 17, Station Parade at Muswell Hill. The house is still there but with unfortunate additions. They didn't stay there much longer and moved to handsome accommodation at The Gables in Fortis Green. 

Unfortunately, I can't lay my hands on the drawing Boxsius made at Shaldon showing the alley leading up to the yard of the Crown Inn. It provides the basis for the woodcut The Crown Inn, Shaldon but I can't track that down either. What is interesting about Daisy's work is that it isn't genre. There is no trace of the salmon fishermen who worked the river from the same beach. She doesn't disguise the fact that it is a holiday scene. It is a well-composed description of the facts. She left her husband to make things up.

S.G. Boxsius' original colour design for 'Autumn'

                                                                              

If you had ever wondered why the roofs are different colours in S.G. Boxsius' linocut called 'Autumn', I can at least tell you that Boxsius intended the colour to be red though as you see there are different shades here. The design came up at auction in Colchester and shows yet again how carefully the artist planned his prints. Nonetheless, the individual impressions here make it obvious, the image was cut with a spontaneity that is lacking in the original design.

I would be fairly certain the design is a combination of linocut and gouache and that is by the artist simply because it is marked 'No 1' in Boxsius' neat handwriting. We have already seen the original drawing that he made while in Devon or Cornwall. Now that we have the colour design, it all begins to look incredible. Very little preparatory work for British colour prints have survived. Some of Allen Seaby's remain in private hands and as you will know, preparatory work by Boxius also remains in private hands. The fact that a drawing and a colour design survive for a single woodcut from the late twenties, is astonishing.

As you will know, the woodcuts made for British Belting and Elastic were so numerous, others helped with the printing. I assume some were his pupils at Bolt Court in London. Why 'Autumn' should have so many variants is another matter, but they keep turning up, with some better than others, such as the orange impression, where the orange works so well with the grey-blue of the sky and the straw colour of the grass. I hope I shouldn't need to add how necessary it would be for any half-serious collector of the artist's work to find and purchase a comparable impression and not consider the price. You will notice a similar use of rich tones in the excellent impression of  'Houghton Bridge' (one of the many prints belonging to a reader in the United States). As I say, with an artist like Boxsius, the variants and the impressions are important. 

You read it here.

Frances Blairs's 'At the Trossachs'

 

I had a note from a reader telling me how how pleased they were to find Frances Blair's colour woodcut 'At the Trossachs'. I am not surprised. This stylish and very attractive print has not been seen online before and was sold only in July in St. Petersburg, Florida, so it has provided me with a good opportunity to let readers see another side to Blair. Very much in the Scottish tradition of art deco picnics, it is numbered 32/100 so Blair must have sold quite a few, leaving us all with hope we may find it, too, one day. 

Many thanks to the reader for tipping me off. I only wish I had got there first.