S.G. Boxsius 'October' coming up at Exeter.

Here is a colour linocut by S.G. Boxsius that has a lot to recommend it but leaves me feeling perplexed. It was first exhibited with the Graver Printers in 1931  and suspect it was originally designed as as the calendar image for 'Autumn' but the well-known image of the large trees on the Devon coast took it place. The great strength of the print is its use of colour and I also suspect Boxsius typically went to another artist for a starting-point.

So far as I know, it is the only flower-piece Boxsius made. I would think most of you would not even regard him as a flower artist. The leader of the pack was Yoshijiro Urushibara who first exhibited his Chrysanthemums at the Society for Original Woodcuts in Paris in 1922 but did exhibit the print with the Graver Printers until 1934. So far as I am concerned, the grey version is Urushibara's best print. It manages to combine the subtlety of Japanese printmaking with the western talent for perspective and description but I have posted already about this celebrated group of flower prints in 'Yoshijiro Urushibara visits Kew Gardens' so I have used the blue version here.

This all means I have assumed Boxsius saw the Urushibara print at his exhibition held at the Abbey Gallery in 1928. I do not have a catalogue but there were many prints in the show and it is likely to have been there. I say all this because it is instructive to compare the two different pieces. Without doubt, the Urushibara is austere and the Boxsius surprisingly approachable; one floats in a ambiguous way, the other is fixed inside the frame. It was unusual for colour print artists of the period to work outside the conventional print area but Allen Seaby pulled it off with Heron though the Boxsius leaves me wondering what the actual position of the vase of flowers is. He lets us know the light is coming from the right and leaving a reflection on the vase and casting a shadow on the left. But there is no sense the ginger jar is an important part of the picture in the way Urushibara's vase is, even though we can tell it is round and stands a little above us. That kind of thing would be too literal for a Japanese artist. For them, the vase is not a mere container and in a great masterstroke, Urushibara turned his vase into a wintry tuber. In terms of colour it is close to Giles and his pairs of peacocks, one brilliant, one drab.

What I do like about October is the crowded sense of fullness. What he gives us is a happy bunch not a sophisticated arrangement. What the background is I do not know. Nor can I explain why there is some much unused space above the flowers other than what I said about it being a calendar image. But all of those were woodcuts and this is not. It is lino used in a way it had not been used before. For all their buoyancy, the refreshing colours are arranged in a way no one was doing. With lino you necessarily paint with a broad brush or produce something schematic. Boxsius has managed both detail and expression in a satisfying way that is very different from the large scale detailed colour linocuts made after the second war. For all its occasional awkwardness, October was done with a light and carefree touch and this is what makes it worth buying.

You can do so at Bearnes, Hampton & Littlewood at Exeter at 10.00 GMT on 14th May, 2024. I have my own proof, so feel free. The one illustrated here is the one for sale. It is not in perfect condition as you can see, but is a lot better than the one I have. 

Chrysanthemums is for sale from Hilary Chapman at £700, but it is the blue version and I think the grey one is the best. 

Further information about S.G. Boxsius 'Spring'

          

I had always believed that S.G. Boxsius never dated any of his prints but I found out today that I was wrong. A reader generously gave me his spare copy of his calendar image, Spring (above) which I posted about not long ago. I showed him my own proofs of Autumn and Winter which he printed on a fine tissue. (See below) Spring on the other hand is printed on heavy wove and I said it looked as though he used heavier and less expensive paper for another year. It turned out I was right because after my visitor left, I had another look at my new Spring and discovered a faint '1932' underneath his signature.

'Spring' by S.G. Boxsius

                  

A reader has just sent me photographs he has taken of his two proofs of S.G. Boxsius calendar image Spring to show just how much they can differ. As I had expressed doubts about the condition of some of the prints that turn up, I thought I would post the reader's photos here so that anyone who is thinking about buying one has some idea what the print should look like. Draw your own conclusions but I wonder if some of the printing was unstable and the images has faded.

                        

Colour prints on ebay this week.

                                                                               

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.

'Wind' by S.G. Boxsius

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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.

Four colour woodcuts by SG Boxsius at Leominster

 

I have been surprised on visits to Leominster recently how many antiques shops and centres you find there are. The overall effect is to make the place look tatty and temporary. In fact someone who lives nearby went as far as to describe Leominster as 'a hole'.  Readers from outside of the UK will not be aware that this has become standard practice here. This means Evesham is a hole and so is Hereford while Gloucester is merely 'depressing'. I could go on. All I can say is such people have never been anywhere near a real hole. 

Suffice to say, you would not find colour woodcuts by S.G Boxsius coming up for sale in a proper hole. Nor would Boxsius himself have gone anywhere near one. He spent the last days of his life in 1940 visiting Tenbury Wells just over the boundary in Worcestershire. How these four prints ended up in Herefordshire is another matter. They were all handed out as Christmas presents to employees and clients of British Belting and Asbestos from 1930 onwards. I thought I had covered this subject fairly well but as I have had an enquiry from a reader about the Leominster prints, I thought it was as well to try and clear up any remaining confusion.

The term 'the four seasons' came into use quite a few years ago and I can assure you all that the idea did exist but that Boxsius only produced Spring, Autumn and Winter. Summer was the work of John Hall Thorpe and was the only one of the four to be machine-printed (presumably by the art printers Bemrose of Derby). All three of the seasonal prints by Boxsius were printed by hand on fine paper and unlike the Hall Thorpe were only signed in the block and never in pencil below the image. Nevertheless, Autumn remains one of his very best and most rewarding pieces of work and is well worth buying. Winter also found Boxsius on top of his form with the scudding clouds being some of his most remarkable effects. As the notes on the back say they suggest further snow to come and emphasise how much atmospheric effects were a concern in his work.

Spring and Winter come with the original labels supplied by B, B & A attached to the back. My hunch is the notes are the work of William Giles. For all the elegance of the phrases he uses, Giles was both a knowledgeable and perceptive writer and worth attending to. The labels suggest the work was framed by the recipients back the thirties. All the images here are the ones on the auction house website. Its is always preferable to buy the prints unframed. Now and then, they even come up in their original calendar mounts though I only the containing Valencia one by Arthur Rigden Read.

This means there were at least three artists working on commission for B, B & A during the thirties, with Boxsius being the artist they work with most and most successfully. The fourth print in the sale is Early morning. Like the Read and Hall Thorpe images, this one was machine printed but is a better and more professional image than the other two. There were two further prints, both with titles straight from Giles. Evening afterglow is the least common of any of the series. In fact, the only one I have ever come across is the proof that I now own. I have certainly never seen it since. Mid-day (not to be confused with Noon-day) was sold quite a long time ago by Hilary Chapman and is again pretty rare.

One reason for buying any of the series is the fact that they are all woodcuts. Lino could be unsuitable for long print runs and wood may also have been easier for professional printers to work with. The first ones are the best but as you know almost anything by Boxsius is worth buying. It is a pity Minster decided to put all four in one lot. Presumably they expect the trade to buy while collectors will already have one or two of these themselves (as I do) and will regretfully have to let the others pass. I would have certainly considered bidding for Spring and it is going to be interesting to see what the lot fetches and who buys it.

Lot 371 comes up at Minster Auctions, Leominster, Herefordshire on 1st November, 2023.

Update on SG Boxsius 'Ruins at Walberswick' at Dallas

 

I thought about calling this update 'Ruins at Dallas' because I am told SG Boxsius' Ruins at Walberswick sold for only $150 yesterday. The only interest came from a reader who assumed it would go higher and tells me he had not intended to bid. I say all this only because there is no certainty about the way a print of even this standard will go and it is always worth watching a lot as my reader did. I can understand why such a dark print might not have general appeal but sooner or later there will be none to buy at all. Finally, I am always pleased when readers do well and in this case the longer the reader owns 'Ruins at Dallas' the more it will prove to have been a great opportunity he did not miss.

In his own view a print by an American artist would have created more interest. As it was the Boxsius was lost amongst the furniture and jewellery.

Results of the sale at Banbury (and what you did not see there)

                                                                         

I would like to say that any one of the colour prints you see here came up for sale at Banbury rather than the ones that did, but all of them are as rare as anything is going to be and would attract any serious collector. But I have brought them up from my records and thought it was a good idea to let readers see some of the work that does not come up for sale at all often. This is not to disparage the prints that were sold. I would have bought any of them but I needed to a bookcase and fridge instead.

I have been warned to let you know that online buyers needed to pay 40% more than the hammer price. The buyers premium of 31.2% includes VAT and on top of that online sales are subject to a further fee of  8.2%, also including VAT. The effect was to depress prices and meant that once the vendor had paid their own fee, they would not be getting very much. Overall it probably means you would be better off selling on ebay if you did not have to pack up all the stuff you have sold.

I was surprised Allen Seaby's woodcut Pewits was the most expensive at £500 (and altogether you would almost pay £700 which is not all that cheap for a piece of work that I personally think falls flat). The barn owl print was much better value at £240 and more attractive than a fridge. It would end up costing you about £330 and as I could have got to Banbury on the train I could have picked it up.

The Phillips went cheap at £420 although the auctioneers did themselves and their vendors no favours by putting up poor photographs. Considering the photos have to be paid for by the vendor, it makes the whole situation even worse. It's all a bit of a stunt but there you are, and going by what you can pay for a Phillips from a dealer, someone will be pleased.

As predicted, John Hall Thorpe's prices are going nowhere and are well below what they were in their heyday ten years ago. We all knew he was overpriced then and scoffed but I would have gladly paid £130 for this pair of prints. The fuss over Hall Thorpe tended to obscure the fact that his work is well-made indeed. He had been a professional block-cutter in Australian before he came to Britain and had a good eye for colour. What he did not do was print the work himself, something the labels make clear. This never seemed to put buyers off in the past and for that type of decorative work it hardly matters.

The Urushibara was another reasonable buy at £250. Read's Venetian shawl was even better at £270 given the poor condition of so many of the proofs I have seen and the place the woodcut has in British colour woodcut history. Read was the only British colour woodcut artists to pull portraiture off. Not only that, he singlehandedly reinvented the medium for a post-war audience who no longer wanted the earnest work of the pre-war arts and crafts movement.

I have no doubt you will also want to know what the prints are that did not come up for sale at Banbury (and which will probably not come up for sale anywhere soon). First of all comes S. G. Boxsius' diminutive masterpiece Bowsprits. Despite the poor quality of the reproduction, the work stands out as Boxsius at his most Boxsius, with all that that means. Far more rare is Phyllis Platt's stylish portrait of her daughter, Una, lying reading on a sofa. This has never appeared online until today and very few people  have ever seen it. I found the illustration in a catalogue that was sent to me. I probably don't need to say she was the wife of John Platt but typically we know very little about her. The third print is Seaby's Karnack from 1925, followed by a more interesting early colour woodcut of a St Ives shop window by the Scottish artist, Frances Blair. Below that is Edward Ashendens's Old Icelander. He is best known as a designer of dioramas but here is making a creditable colour woodcut. Continuing the theme of ships and the sea, there is Hugo Henneberg's important colour linocut Dalmatia and then Kenneth Broad with all his originality and sense of style to the fore in a subtle and sensitive colour woodcut he simply called Hastings.

The curious rise of S.G. Boxsius

Clive Christie recently suggested to me that S. G. Boxsius was 'an artist for uncertain times'. Readers who have been round long enough will know that Clive can be relied on for such perceptive remarks. What he said certainly made me stop and think.  A part of the appeal of Boxsius is his sense of place and small scale sensibility. It doesn't matter where he goes, from St Paul's Cathedral to the quay at Looe, he tends to make it his own. It is always England and it is often momentary but whether it is a sudden shower or the heat of midday, there is always an ongoing conversation, sometimes literally.

This does not explain why Boxsius prints have been turning up first in Britain and now in the U.S. I heard only today from a relieved reader, telling me the proof of The black bull he had purchased had arrived at his home and turned out to be a loose sheet in good condition ( aside from a poorly attached hinge). But there is more. The same person tells me Ruins at Walberswick is coming up for sale at J. Garrett Auctioneers in Dallas on 10th September.  I have known about this print for quite a few years but until this year, I had never seen it. Now good images have turned up twice. As for The black bull, until this year, I don't believe any of us had even heard it. Suddenly there are two. As for the one in South Africa, how did that get to be there?

 

This doesn't look like a blip. If it means there is growing interest and that prices have risen, well, it has not been an overall disaster as both myself and readers have discovered in the past month or so. What all this means is there is an opportunity to buy and build a small collection and frankly it hardly matters what you buy. On the whole, what you pay will average out and although there is the odd dud, Boxsius was not only a proficient artist, he had a vision of England and its coast and buildings, holidays and days out that is coherent. This means everything you buy will fall into place and the more you have the more will be revealed.

As it happens, I was in Pershore in Worcestershire today and Ian Pugh the second-hand bookseller there mentioned Tenbury Wells which lies on the other side of the county. This was where Boxsius died and frankly nowhere could have been better. Like Winchelsea and Devon or Spitalfields and Kew, Tenbury Wells is Boxsius country. But then, every now and again, I look out from the train and there it is once more, Boxsius country, that curious land of uncertain light and certainty of purpose.

Email for Modern Printmakers

I have failed to inform readers that my old email to be found on the blog and in the comments section was discontinued a month or two ago. I know at least one reader has tried to contact me since then, so apologies to them. Anyone who does need to contact me directly, please use cgc505@outlook.com. Otherwise, continue to leave comments in the box.

To make amends, I am posting a fresh image of SG Boxsius' Unloading gravel. This linocut has only appeared recently and the image above was supplied only today by a reader from the United States. If any of you come upon this print for sale again, please let me know using the email provided and my reader may have better luck the next time.

A trove of linocuts by SG Boxsius

 

It beats me where all the Boxsius woodcuts and linocuts that have have come up for sale in the past few weeks and months actually come from. One reader believes the prints recently for sale on British ebay were part of a collection. This may be true but I wonder how a collector has found unsigned proofs and why they should be a damaged print in a collection. It is always possible they have come down through the family of Daisy Boxsius or were sold in a sale following her death. But that was a long time ago.

Spring morning, Arundel (top) has never appeared online until the past few weeks and then to my surprise not one but two unframed proofs turn up. This is very unusual even for Boxsius. I happened to already know the print well because my old friend Alan Guest owned a proof which he thought highly of (and I coveted), so making  a purchase was the obvious thing to do. It was under-priced and in good condition. There is no sign of framing, no scuffing or deterioration caused by exposure to light so it looks like both proofs have been lying undisturbed somewhere for a long time. 

                                     

Having bought that, I was then encouraged to get A Devon village as well (second from the top) and did not regret the purchase either. Also available was an unsigned proof of Seaside (above). This is a great little print but I was suspicious about the lack of a signature and resisted the temptation even though figure subjects by Boxsius are rare. I have copies of a number of watercolours of Shakespeare characters that show another side to someone who we all tend to see as a landscape artist.

His use of figures was carefully considered. As you will see from the design above, the two young women on the left were an addition. Others may disagree but I believe they refer back to figures in both Georges Seurat's Bathers, Asnieres and Giorgione's The tempest (below) which had been exhibited in London in 1929. (Boxsius exhibited Seaside in 1931).

Boxsius had always had an interest in the history art and he and Daisy had books about the old masters at home. What is impressive is the way he used very different sources to put together his prints. On the face of it, Twilight, Winchelsea (below) (which also came up for sale on ebay but was damaged) draws on the modern stylishness of Grosvenor School artists who Boxsius exhibited alongside in the early 1930s. But both William Giles and the Giorgione are also in the mix. Here was an artist of wide sympathies who took a great interest in the work of others.

The white railings and orange roof-tops are direct borrowings from Giles' bizarrely wonderful At eventide, Rothenburg am Tauber (below) for about 1906. What is missing in the Boxsius is the eccentricity of Giles' railings. Also compare the buildings in the Giorgione with the array of chimney pots in A Devon village. A trained artist's visual memory should work in that way but you have to be sympathetic in the first place to retain the information.

I have come to the conclusion that Boxsius was a holiday and weekend artist. He had a responsible job as art supervisor at the London School of Photo-engraving and Lithography, which sometimes involved taking evening classes. But the palces he visited mattered to him and what is worth remarking on is the strong sense of place he achieved. As a person, he was always north London and never strayed far from Highgate Cricket Club all his life. Even when he and Daisy moved from rented rooms into a proper flat in Fortis Green, he made sure the club wasn't far way. Look how closely he places the figures between the rocks and the way the half-timbered building at Arundel is made to fit into the image.

The black bull (above) has turned up twice, once in Britain and once in the US (where it was wisely bought by a reader). With its reading of the weather, it is a classic Boxsius image. The others appearing recently include Noon-day and the early woodcuts Houghton Bridge, Sussex, The broken plough and The old mill, most of which appear elsewhere on Modern Printmakers. The only reason I say 'early' is because I have never found a record of any of them being exhibited which means they all probably belong to the period prior to 1928.

I also want to say there is an article in preparation (and almost finished) 'Yoshijiro Urushibara, Arthur Rigden Read and S.G. Boxsius' which I hope to place in a journal or magazine. I am aware this has all been a long time coming but the issues with reproduction rights and copyright are most trying.

Ian Cheyne, S.G. Boxsius & John Hall Thorpe at Mallam's

 

I owe a debt to the two readers who wrote to tell me about the forthcoming sale of modern prints at Mallam's in Oxford on Wednesday, 8th December. It is not only a matter of the sale including an artist who I like as much as many other readers do. The sale includes many prints by post-war British artists, including members of the the well-known group like Patrick Caulfield, Allen Jones and David Hockney who all studied at the Royal College of Art in the early 1960s. When I began this blog, none of us would have predicted that a teacher-graduate of the R.C.A. in the 1920s like S.G. Boxsius would find a place among  professional artists like Caulfield and Jones. But here is he is, with two woodcuts and a linocut, which attest to the central place the R.C.A. has had for post-graduate studies in Britain for many years now.

It is all about money. We all all know that if  Boxsius prices had not been going up, he would not be there alongside bankable artists like Ian Cheyne and John Hall Thorpe and the information they give about the prints is wrong. But starting with Cheyne (top) Loch Shiel is one of the later, more decorative prints he made in the thirties and went up for sale first in 1937. Like all his prints, Loch Shiel is exceptionally well-made and designed and as Cheynes don't come on the market that often, it should sell for a good price. Generally, I prefer the earlier ones but anything by him is worth having.

Mallam's in common with so many people before' have decided Boxsius' Autumn (second from the top) depicts summer. It is the less common one where the farmhouse has a yellow roof and like most of them is signed only in the block. The print was based on a drawing still owned by a member of the family but the trees have been made far bigger and the effect of the olive green against the sky in the top left corner is magnificent. Also notable is the faint view across the bay, a typical Boxsius piece of subtlety which is possibly at its best here. Made in 1930, there was also an edition though I have never come across an record of it being exhibited anywhere. Also included in the sale is By the quay, Looe, (above) given a first viewing online here only a few weeks ago and if their cataloguer read Modern Printmakers, he would not have made the obvious mistake of saying it was a woodcut. The majority of his prints were lino, though to be fair, it is never easy to say which is which.

Also up for auction are a number of flower prints by John Hall Thorpe, including this one of forget-me-nots and daisies which I have never seem before. There is one early print called forget-me-nots where the main flower is, in fact, primulas, but that one is typical of his style while the one above is bolder and could be one of the woodcuts sold at his first London exhibitions in 1919. Unusually, the area outside the black background is printed in blue. I am not sure what is happening there and I can't think of any other example like it.

'S. G. Boxsius from the Roof' : a prospectus for a new book & two new images

 

As artists of lesser standing and with less appeal than S.G. Boxsius have had small books published about them in recent years, I thought it was time Boxsius had one to himself more or less. This should be enough to please some readers at least although it would not be necessary or possible to devote a book to Boxsius on his own. There is not enough material out there about any of these artists to write a book about them. But as Boxsius was doing something new when he began making linocuts, a book would provide the chance to include linocut contemporaries of his like Isabel de B. Lockyer, Chica MacNab and Robert Howey. It would also be an opportunity to tell the true story of how the whole linocut trip took off well in the corrective fashion of Boxsius himself  before the Grosvenor School opened its illustrious doors in Pimlico.

In order to pull this off, I need help from readers. The number of prints by Boxsius in American and British museum collections can be counted on ten fingers. This is not very many for someone who produced at least thirty-five prints between about 1928 and 1938. But collectors have been taking an interest since the 1980s when Alan Guest identified Boxsius as one of the best practitioners. This means that the majority of his prints are in private collections in both the U.S. and Britain and I do need any readers willing to have their own images photographed for inclusion in the book to come forward. Without loans, this will not get off the ground. 

In the mean time, I include two prints you may not have seen and a better image of London from the roof than the small one you will have. (It is the same print I would think but in larger format). At the very top of the post is one of Boxsius' classic holiday images, By the quay, Looe from 1937. Presumably it shows 'Waterwitch' having her hull painted or caulked. The ship had already appeared in his work in 1934. Indeed there are times when he appeared to be short of new ideas. In other respects, he looked at his subject the way a sculptor does, turning it round to view it from all sides. Some of you will know the photograph of him working on a large tankard at Camden School of Art. There is also another photo of him surrounded by classical casts in the art room at Bolt Court. These are both telling photographs.

But not content with re-using images of his own, Boxsius often made productive use of the ideas of other artists. Ruins at Walberswick from 1931 (second from the top) depends on Eric Slater's The land-gate, Winchelsea from about 1926 (third from top) and the colour woodcuts of Cornwall that Sidney Lee made about 1905. (For readers who do not know the country, Looe is in Cornwall).  Nothing shows the corrective temper of the man better. In this respect, Boxsius was also a link between the old school colour woodcutters of the pre-war period and the new school linocut artists of the twenties. You can decide for yourself on the relative merits of the two prints by Boxsius and Slater. But you should know by now that there is more to Boxsius than meets the eye and there is a second more surprising source for his print in the shape of Elizabeth Keith's East Gate, Seoul by moonlight made in about 1920 (above). All this only goes to show how aware Boxsius was and how much he could absorb. Ruins at Walberswick isn't Boxsius at his best. That said, at this stage in the proceedings I will probably buy anything by him I can lay my hands on.

Sorry to say I have mislaid some of the email address of readers who I know own work by Boxsius. Anyone who can help though can contact me (Gordon Clarke) at the usual e mail cgc@waitrose.com. I can then send them a check list of Boxsius prints.

Land of Hope & Glory: the colour woodcuts of E.A. Hope

 

The only reason the colour woodcuts of E.A. Hope have not been featured on Modern Printmakers before is because so few can be seen anywhere - until now, that is. I have a record of eleven colour woodcuts and six of them are here, enough to give readers a good idea of what she could do.

She was born in the Sydney suburb of Ryde in 1870 but the family's true home was Hopetoun House, an extensive Palladian mansion at South Queensferry on the Firth of Forth. Her father was  the Hon. Louis Hope, son of the Earl of Hopetoun who was serving as Governor of Australia. Hope moved to London where her mother lived in Chelsea. Hope herself lived in Fulham is an area that remains full of artists' studios. (Robert Gibbings was in the next street and John Hall Thorpe not far away either). She studied at the Slade but this doesn't make her  Stanley Spencer or Gwen John. She may only have been there for a term or two. She could have afforded more but that isn't the point. At the Slade she must have got to know Elsie Garrett Rice and Lucy Gill who went on to make colour woodcuts after the first war. Hope and Garrett Rice both made colour woodcuts at Boston in Lincolnshire (below) and one reader is not only lucky enough to own both  prints, Boston church by the river (1929) by Garrett Rice is inscribed to Gill and her brother, Edwin. (To be included in a second post).

This group of friends and her contact with Australia help to make Hope worth looking at. Like so many. she switched from etching to colour woodcut and, as with so many, the reason can be found in the work that Frank Brangwyn and Yoshijiro Urushibara did together. (Hope had Brangwyn design a bookplate for her as Edith Hope.) In 1915, Walter Sparrow-Shaw brought out A book of bridges illustrated with what appeared to be woodcuts by Brangwyn. Urushibara took the least exclamatory of these and with an inwardness and skill that was beyond his collaborator, transformed the small image into the magnificent Ruins of a Roman bridge of 1919. Along with Brangwyn's series of grandiloquent windmills, this bridge set a trend like no other. It meant that no colour woodcut artist seeing a nice old bridge could resist having a go and Hope was more successful than most. Trotton Bridge (1925) easily outperforms Phillip Needell's Pont d'Avignon (1925) and Eric Hesketh Hubbard's canal bridge.

I am  pretty certain this print gave S.G. Boxsius the idea for his early colour woodcut, Houghton Bridge, Sussex. I say this partly because around this time the Austrailian artist, Ethel Spowers, came over from Paris and made two colour woodcuts of bridges, including her 1926 print The Green Bridge showing the Kissing Bridge at Walberswick, quite obviously the basis for Boxsius' masterly At Walberswick from five years later. The people who try to write about the colour linocuts that Spowers made after studying with Claude Flight three years later, have missed all this and consequently the relationships between the artists making colour woodcut and colour linocut (and some times it was the dame people) have not been properly researched. (You read that here first.) Only look at the differences between The red tower (top) and the two prints below. First the history. The town is Albenga on the Italian Riviera (the print is sometimes simply called Albenga). Isabel de  B Lockyer often worked on the same coast and towers by the sea are often found in her work. By the time Hope made The red tower, the supporting outlines of the keyblock in the other two prints has been lost in the blue atmosphere. Its is not the conventional view of the town either. Hope instead looks inland from the sea to the light of dawn on the range of mountains beyond - and to anyone who knows the coastal towns of Italy, nothing could be more true of them. Here is a print that is linocut in all but name, a subtle blend of de B. Lockyer, Hokusai and perhaps memories of Australia that is unusual.

What holds all this work together isn't the motifs of towers and bridges so much as her sense of tone. This changes very much and is partly related to the different techniques she used. Albi (above) has a firm woodcut feel about it and emphasises the texture of the stone and rooftops. You can see immediately how far she had moved away from drawing and etching in The red tower and by how much Hope went on learning as other printmakers began making new images. She was also typical of the artists who began making colour woodcut after the wat in the way she never appeared to use brushes. Like Gill and Garrett Rice, the surface is mottled. She also makes patterns in the way a colour woodcut artist wouldn't. Th string of lights in her Italian town is prominent but the way the crowd in Boston Market or the team on Trotton Bridge introduce a similar rogue line is deftly done.

Significantly, Durham (above) was exhibited at a joint show of woodcuts and linocuts only thirteen miles away at Sunderland. This was December, 1931 when the first and second exhibitions of British linocut were blazing a trail through provincial municipal galleries. Her print York was also there, though this remains untraced (though I depend on readers to find one and let me know). I considered including work by all the others I mention here to put Hope in some kind of context, but as this is the only article to have appeared about Hope since Clive Christie wrote about her well over ten years ago on Art and the aesthete, I decided to avoid confusion.

The final  image is Market, Espalion.  The rickety style of drawing suggests she knew the work of French graphic artists like J.-E. Laboureur.  Hope had left Fulham for Kensington by the end of the war then eventually moved to a house called Byways at Steep near Petersfield in Hampshire and only a mile from Bedales where Garrett Rice had been a teacher. Work by Rice is even harder to come by but going by Boston Stump, she could pull it off. But that is for another post, another day.