Edna Boies Hopkins: the Derbyshire connection

Back in 1908, the educationalist Samuel Clegg published a monograph about the American colour woodcut artist, Edna Boies Hopkins. This included an odd passage where he said he  regretted that her prints had not been made available 'for art school purposes'. In those days it was common practice for art students to study and copy the work of other people. Alphonse Legros taught his students at the Slade to distinguish between the hand of Raphael and the work of his two assistants. But this didn't make the remark any less odd, at least not till he wrote a second monograph about Allen Seaby who did make imperfect (and unsigned) proofs of his own prints available to schools at a reduced rate.

Boies Hopkins was a student of Arthur Wesley Dow, himself a well-known art educationalist by the time Clegg was publishing his monographs. Whether she made her own proofs available is another thing but British students did nevertheless make use of her work in a very direct way as you can see from the nicotianas below.

Clegg was headmaster of the new Long Eaton School and one of his school governors acquired four  recent prints by Boies Hopkins for the very purpose. I can't remember offhand whether Nicotianas (below, 1909) was one of them but judging by the children's work made only four years afterwards in 1913, it was. So, here were thirteen and fourteen-year old Derbyshire school children cutting and printing their own colour woodcuts in the Japanese manner with Boies Hopkins examples supplied for them to study by the school. 

But why use Boies Hopkins and not Seaby? I think there are two reasons. Firstly, Boies Hopkins concentrated on one image rather than make a complex picture and, secondly, although Boies Hopkins had gone to Japan in order to learn how to make a keyblock, by the time Clegg wrote his article, the keyblock was no more than a vestige in her work and often wasn't there at all. This all made the process of cutting and printing much easier for the children.

On of these lucky children was Edward Loxton Knight who went on to train at Nottingham School of Art where he specialised in commercial art. When I first wrote about Loxton Knight, I had no idea about the survival of this remarkable series of school prints but, as you can see The primrose-seller (1929) his first professional print, the Boies Hopkins lesson sunk in. It is not so much the flower subject that was like her as the overall tone, particularly the way the print was wiped in the same downward manner Boies Hopkins was using before the first war.

As you can see, Loxton Knight had learned to use a keyblock to define smaller shapes and to provide moulding for larger figures like his primrose-seller. Ironically, he didn't use the Japanese manner at all but printed all his blocks with poster colour, adapting the flat Japanese style to give the contemporary feel of commercial art of the period. But he certainly got away with it and, so far as I am concerned, this first print of his was the most satisfying he made along with The Nottingham Canal.

It is in the nature of commercial artists to make use of approximation to gain their effect. But there was another sleight of hand involved in The primrose-seller and one you could only be aware of if you know this location well. The primrose seller is standing on the north side of the market square in Nottingham where people were still selling flowers and newspapers when I grew up. The problem is from where the man is standing, it is impossible to see the spire of St Peter's church at the bottom of Wheeler Gate. It just looked better that way, that's all.

The Vale of Pewsey by Edward Loxton Knight

I thought this was a rare enough colour woodcut by the British artist Edward Loxton Knight to be worth a quick post. It's just come up for sale on British ebay from Jubilee Galleries at the kind of 'Buy it now' price it might go for at auction in Nottingham without exactly being his most stylish work. He adopted a pretty Arnesby-Brownish manner later on and I don't think The Vale of Pewsey is as period as some of the work on my Loxton Knight post (September, 2011). In its favour, it's subtle and ambitious. It's the first out of an edition of 35, I think, still in the original frame and mount, so it is hard to say what the actual condition is - and at that kind of price, it matters. If his earlier work tends to look like colour-by-numbers, then this one is too much like a conventional landscape painting to be that interesting as a print. He just can't win, can he?

                                                                                 
Here is a replacement image that I've found with help (see comments) which may show altered colours, I'll put it like that. It will come from a photograph from a catalogue because that's where all these art sites find their images - that or on ebay.  I had this one down as The Trent Valley, which is probably wrong as the Trent valley isn't so heavily wooded. You have to ask yourself if this is just another version or is it just that the top print has faded. I tend to think Loxton Knight was correcting a misjudgement by darkening  the foreground in the lower print because the blue of the valley in the upper print is too pronounced and makes it float upwards. Darkening the clouds had the same effect. I think the improvements work and that number two is the better print. It goes to show what care Loxton Knight took with his woodcuts.
                                                                               

Edward Loxton Knight ( British, 1905 - 1993)

Yet another British printmaker who is absent from the annals, probably largely due to scarcity. He was encouraged to take an interest in art by Samuel Clegg, his headmaster at Long Eaton Grammar School. Clegg went on to teach him how to make colour woodcuts and he was skilled enough to produce this ad for Sandeman's while still a student at Nottingham Art College.

He went on to make a series of colour woodcuts in the 1920s using a spare, stylish manner that belies his considerable skill. As you see from this bold view of the Nottingham Canal with the castle beyond, he had most in common with the poster artist Frank Newbould. Whether Newbould would have bothered obtaining those rich foreground blacks and layers of mauve is another matter. (JMW Turner, with licence, painted the same view).

In fact this view of the lock gates farther along the canal (yes, I know these views extremely well) does show him to be a subtle colourist. It's not just about impact; the shifting angles and levels are well-thought out, the warm ginger against the black of the road bridge a combination worthy of Fez or Rabat. He's a nice observer, too. That walkway remains damp to this day. He shifts very little around; it is all entirely recognisable.

And he continues the urban theme in this cool analysis of Zarauz in the Basque Country. I suspect there is a move away from the easier effects of the first print and the final woodcut has him binding and plaiting the luminous Souths Downs fields with all the verve and none of the daftness of the Grosvenor School.