Walter J. Phillips by Nancy Green

                                 

  
Books about colour woodcut or linocut artists are becoming something of a cottage industry this year. Leonard Beaumont, Sidney Lee and Eric Slater are now joined by Walter Phillips from Pomegranate Press in Portland, Oregon. It is more of an appreciation than a scholarly work, with contributions from two of Phillips descendants, and a longer piece by the Cornell Arts & Crafts scholar, Nancy E Green. She goes over the life, adding details I had not come across before, and looking at his work as an artist making colour woodcuts (139 of them), watercolours, wood-engravings and etchings.
                                                       

        
Yes, he was as prolific as he was determined. He also did not start making colour woodcut until about 1916, so the number he made is remarkable, especially given the high standards he set himself. The book itself is mildly disappointing. There are a lot of images, all in colour, but somehow not quite right. The selection lacks the impact of Phillips at his best. He was a rather self-contained man, making a lot of striking but self-contained images. (The ones you see here and not necessarily in the book, although The Chinese Coat is). He used his children frequently as models (and also presumably his wife, Gladys) but the book doesn't say who his subjects are. Nor does Nancy Green talk about Phillip's country in Manitoba (along Red River), and then later Alert Bay in British Columbia.
                                                              

There are mistakes in the book - worse, they are other people's mistakes, which could easily have been avoided by reading the actual documents. Getting gallery names in London wrong is the kind of thing a scholar shouldn't do, but that Nancy Green has made a core subject. Perhap the problem is that the ground has already been covered more than once. A biography appeared during Phillip's lifetime, which is the main source for a lot of what we know about his life, and there were also books about him in 1978 and 1981. But this is the first to be made widely available by a publisher and is a must for your bookcase.

                                                         
I was hoping for more about his return to Britain in the mid twenties and the artists that he met. It was a crucial time for Phillips. It was where Urushibara handed over his know-how, and he gained the expertise that gave his prints the perfection that people pay so much for. I opened the package with anticipation, but what comes over here is a lack of fresh research, the sort of thing you look for in a new book about an artist. But it isn't that kind of a book and, for all its handsome American exterior and uncluttered layout, it's all a touch dull and been there. Even so, at £13.52 on Amazon, (which is what I paid) or an ebay, it's a book you ought to own. Just apply the plastic.

                                                   

On ebay in Germany

This week German ebay provides you with an opportunity to see one or two colour woodcuts you will not see very often as well as one or two nice-looking prints by more well-known artists. Above all, there is Helene Mass' rich and subtle Gehoeft im Schnee, with remarkably bright fresh colours. It just shows what a difference a good photograph also makes. This print re-affirms my faith in Mass, which I confess sometimes wavers. This is Mass at her most thrilling, convincing and successful
                                                 

Not as good perhaps but even more expensive is another rarity by Helen Tupke Grande. No matter. You won't even pick much up on a Google search except her wonderful print of Venetian boats.
                                                      

Speaking of which there is an unusually bright image of Carl Thiemann's Venezianischen Fischerbooten. I know it's fairly standard stuff fro him, but it does come with copious notes by the master himself. With all the glassy reflections, this reminds me of the famous Abend and I think when you see this close-up and personal, those daubed reflections will look impressive.

More low-key, but no less interesting for all that, is a muted colour woodcut by the Polish artist, Stefan Flipkiewicz, who is new to me. It's unusually early, dating from 1908, a time when artists were still often working with few colours. You can see where Mass had her roots and what she would have done with an image like this.
                                                                         

Finally, this intense and lyrical image by Zdrasila Adolf, yet another name that is new to me, and an unusual woodcut whose bright colours look almost contemporary. I would like to see a larger, better photograph of this - or better still, the print itself. This is hard to judge by what we can see here. It has a fairy-tale delicacy that reminds me of French prints and I especially like the play-off of sunlight and shadow. More complex that it might look at first sight.

D.N. Morgan

                                                                                   

 

Here's an unusual and attractive British printmaker you don't come across very often, the colour woodcut artist, D.N. Morgan. He was a major in the British Army and was awarded the Military Cross in 1915 (although I don't know where). I suspect he had Edinburgh connections but he ended up working in Sussex in the later twenties.
                                                                      

Both these delicate colour woodcuts remind me of the work of Frank Morley Fletcher's students like Elizabeth York Brunton. He was exhibiting with the Colour Woodcut Society in the mid to late 1920s and it strikes me that after that he either opted for brighter colours or he began to use linocut.I assume these were intended as a pair. They certainly go together well, although  Richmond, Yorkshire  is the stronger of the two. (The other print is Branscombe Chine, Bournemouth, which is Urushibara country.)
                                                                                   

You do need to beware because he also produced lithographs at some point that look very similar to these other two prints of India. The one above is The Jhelum, Shrinigar, the one below is Shrinigar, Kashmir. Both date from 1929 and, for all the strength of colour, they lack the impact of the first two, which obviously make conventional use of the Japanese method of woodblock printing.
                                                                          

Still, I suppose I wouldn't mind any of them if they were a lot less than the £250 starting bid on ebay, that is. (The first two prints only). If I wanted to spend that kind of money at auction, I would have to be buying something a bit more special than Major Morgan. Rarity doesn't count for someone with such a low profile. It's only quality that matters.

And for anyone that missed them the first time around, they are back again on ebay today and the same starting bid of £250 will produce the same result.

                                                                     

A bookplate by Carl Moll

                                                                        

I am sorry about how few posts there have been on Modern Printmakers recently, but here is something for everyone who is colour woodcut at heart: an early bookplate with an attribution to the Viennese secessionist, Carl Moll, who I featured quite some while back.

You will find it on British ebay. I would take the date of 1897 given by the dealer with considerable caution because this would make it one of the very earliest of all European colour woodcuts, and interesting as Moll can be, I don't think innovation of that kind could be attached to his name. Only Peter Behrens, and possibly Emil Orlik and Bernhard Pankok, were active in the field in central Europe around then, so you would be paying at least £89 for something with a dubious date. Add to that £8.50 for delivery, and you have the perfect ebay money-spinner.

Half-colour colour woodcuts

                                                                                   

On Monday a print called A Highland Loch by the Scottish artist, Helen Stevenson, went for just over £200. This may well be the highest that one of her colour woodcuts has gone for on on ebay. The irony is that someone paid that amount for one of her cheaper prints. How do I know this?
                                                                           
I will admit I don't have any exhibition record for the woodcut with a price, but all the prints that used a limited number of blocks as this one did, with its three colours and the keyblock, were designed to be cheaper. Eric Hesketh Hubbard (below) specialised in this kind of print and even went so far as to collaborate with Frank Whittington, who cut the block for him. Hesketh Hubbard would have been quite capable of making colour woodcuts in the Japanese manner, but what he wanted to do was produce affordable prints at his own Forest Press.
                                                                               

But what is affordable today? And do you seriously go out and spend that much when you could buy directly from a dealer for the same amount? It's not as if Stevenson is rare by colour woodcut standards. But the point I am making is that I think Stevenson, like Hubbard, made a conscious decision to limit the work she put into the print in order to make it cheaper and much as I like Stevenson's work, I don't think A Highland Loch finds her on top of her form. Frankly, what Hesketh Hubbard did with his gypsy encampment is superior - and he only used one colour. Where he gains is partly with Whittington's complex cutting and unusual use of hatching.
                                                                                 

The master for them all was William Nicholson (above), with the illustrated books he made in the late 1890s. Almost all of his prints, though, were hand-coloured, and were not woodcuts at all. But he showed what could be done with black and a few complimentary colours. And I think this was where Stevenson fell down. Like Nicholson, Hesketh Hubbard wisely opted for black and a pale-ish sepia. The colour of the tree, similar to the other two artists is fine, but the green strikes me as intrusive. You have to know when to stop.

A later master of this sub-form of black and yellowish tones was the much-loved and lauded Arthur Rigden Read. As it happens, one of his prints that took this approach failed to sell on ebay, even though the starting-bid was reasonable. Unfortunately, I don't have an image, but his cat (above) is better, anyway. What Nicholson and Hesketh Hubbard achieved in their rather austere way with their umber and ochre, Read softens and enlivens with a complementary grey. It remains easier to print, but dumps the chapbook manner.

Like Nicholson, Read knew that no matter whether he was depicting a cat or a cowman, these limited tones suited portraiture more than landscape. But if the few colours help to give Read's farmer in his Sussex smock great rustic charm, he was one of the few to use the same approach with far greater subtlety. Read was not a one-note printmaker. Obviously, many artists limit the colours and tones they use to great effect. What Read did was to achieve a lovely balance between the black-and-brown style and the greater sophistication of an artist like John Platt. It all depended on what you could do with grey. Or what you could do with £200. Better spent on Nice weather for ducks if you ask me.
                                                                 

                                                                                       
                                                              

 

 

Sylvan Boxsius 'Afterglow'

                                                                        

For all fans of the British artist, SG Boxsius, an image of his 1933 linocut Afterglow has turned up. It's a fine image, seeing him depicting elm trees with considerable verve. He was getting into his 'less is more' phase by that time, and I like the way he has piled up various shapes behind the farm building. We are used to his single figure masterstrokes by now. The image would be less interesting without the attentive cow. It's remarkable what he achieves with his careful build-up of shapes and tones, and this print shows him very much in William Giles mode, with its depiction of an exact time of day and its mood as a metaphor. It' s always interesting to wonder about the other artists an artist had been looking at. Irresistibly, the miniature scale suggests John Sell Cotman. It's outwardly simple enough, but the complex feelings of a man in his mid-fifties do come through as a result. (He died only eight years after he had made this print).
                                                                               

Unfortunately, I like the condition less. It is quite badly faded all over and I suspect the colours you have here are less vivid than they should be. But this is the first time I've seen this print, so I can't be sure about that. Even so, £175 is quite a hefty price to ask for something in a lot less than perfect condition. As we all know by now, Boxsius isn't a rare artist. His work turns up even more frequently than, say, Seaby, Royds or Platt, simply because he was rated at the time and his work obviously sold. You will find this on British ebay and will see what happens.

Slater's Sussex, the colour woodcuts of Eric Slater: a review

                                                                                
                                                                                       

 

A very unusual event this week, the publication of Slater's Sussex, the colour woodcuts of Eric Slater by James Trollope, the first study of a British colour woodcut artist since Malcolm Salaman's William Giles as far back as 1928. I think the Towner gallery at Eastbourne, who are the publishers, would have been wiser to make more of that than to claim rediscovery of Slater's work, which will strike most readers of this blog as dubious. But more of that later.
                                                                 

Anyone who has chosen to write about a colour woodcut artist soon discovers why so little has appeared untill this week. There are probably only two or three artists where there is enough material for a writer to go on. It was even trickier for James Trollope, because in many ways the subject chose him. He happens to live in the small town of Seaford in Sussex where Slater made most of his colour woodcuts between about 1926 and 1938. Coming across Seaford Head at auction was where it all began for him, and despite a determined effort to discover as much about Slater as he could, including a house-to-house search, his subject remains doggedly elusive. No fault of the author. Despite a valiant effort to place him amongst the other colour woodcut artists of the day, Slater comes over as less intriguing than his prints.
                                                       

I decided to take a sea-faring approach when it came to illustrating my review. In May, 1940, the work you see here by three artists associated with Winchelsea in Sussex - Eric Slater, SG Boxsius and Arthur Rigden Read - was hung together at exhibition. Prints such as Read's Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum and Boxsius' Looe, Cornwall are yet to come my way, but the emphasis on sea-going and the southern British coast is there for all to see. Far from being localist, the exhibition recognised the importance of the sea to national defence. (Uncannily, the Dunkirk evacuation of Allied forces was ordered the day after it closed). James Trollope writes about the very local nature of Slater's subjects, but it is the history and the look of that coastline, with its cliffs and coastguard stations (see top) that has the greater meaning for me.
                                                                   

I happen to be a fan of Slater country myself. I lived at Frog Firle near Seaford for a while and even at the Beachy Head clubhouse above Eastbourne for a month. The landscape is one of the most different and affecting in all Britain. It was Slater who saw this, more so than Eric Ravilious, who was brought up in Eastbourne. James Trollope rightly brings out Slater's oddness, but he is no more odd than the coastline he describes, certainly not if you are used to the Lincolnshire coast as I am. So, the book includes a walk in Slater country, an explanation of the technique he used, it is generously illustrated in colour. So far as the early history of colour woodcut goes, Batten and Fletcher had made a successful print before they read Tokuno; his pamphlet only helped them to sort some of the problems out, but not all. It was published in 1894, not 1892, which was the date of the report it comes from. Nor was Tokuno a printmaker; he was an official. But none of this will be of great concern to most readers.

There is the low-down on more famous contemporaries like Frank Morley Fletcher, John Platt and Read, but no photographs of the artist, or any of the houses he lived in, London or Sussex. Generally, I think it's accepted that the neighbour he had at Winchelsea and who gave him private tuition in colour woodcut is Read (Campbell Dodgson does not name the artist).
                                                                              

The book contains a thorough and useful list of 45 colour woodcuts made over a period of about 12 years. Even though Slater's prints are often smallish, though not as small as Boxsius, bear in mind that Allen Seaby, the most prolific of them, made 100 in a career of 35 years or more. So, Slater showed commitment, and it is all the more surprising that he appeared to give up after the success of having The Stackyard published exclusively in the United States in 1938. James Trollope associates that year with the death of the artist's mother who he had lived with as an only child since the death of his father in 1904. There are no wife and children in the story either, and it's the case that many of these artists have been best served by their grandchildren. Slater has been fortunate to have caught the eye of James Trollope. But who receives fair play is hit-and-miss. The boy in Read's Little fishes (above) is presumably his adoptive son, Clifford, and the woman Kathleen Rigden Read. Slater's work is less obviously personal than Read's, but if Read looks farther, as the book says, in his own way, Slater looks deeper.

You can see a short BBC Sussex film about the artist and the book at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-22312620  Slater's Sussex is available from Towner at £15. Ring general enquires on +44 (0)1323 434670 to order by post and include a further £2.50 to cover costs. There is also e mail contact on their website.  I suspect Towner have not reckoned with the enquiries from outside the UK that I think they are going to get. Ah, well.