The colour woodcut class at Edinburgh College of Art

 

It has been believed for many years now that Frank Morley Fletcher taught a colour woodcut class during his time as principal of Edinburgh College of Art, a period that ran from 1907 to 1923. I want to try and lay this for to rest once and for all. He did not. And while I am at it neither did Mabel Royds. The reasons are different, but the outcome is the same.

In order to gain a teaching post at any state school in Britain, you needed a teacher's diploma. Royds had one from Chester, her husband, E.S. Lumsden, William Giles and Allen Seaby all had one from University College, Reading, S.G. Boxsius had one from Islington, Chica McNabb and Ian Fleming had theirs from Glasgow and Helen Stevenson from Edinburgh. The whole point of the state art school was to train teachers. It has been a famous and long-lived complaint that students went to art school to become artists and were subsequently told that was not why they were there. Fletcher never set foot as a student in any state art school. The myth may have come about because he taught a class at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. But those schools were not run but the state. Rather they were the responsibility of new statutory authorities set up by the government and had the own independent boards of education. This meant that these vocational schools could employ working practitioners like May Morris and Edward Johnston. More likely, though, misconceptions about Fletcher are merely based on assumption.

If there appears to be a discrepancy, it centres round this fact. Many headmasters of art school came straight from what was effectively post-graduate study at the Royal College of Art in London. To Walter Crane, its first principal, the R.C.A. was 'a teacher mill'. (Nor did the chief agitator last long in the post.) It was taken for granted that a graduate would get a job as headmaster once they came out. John Platt (above, painted by Fletcher at Robin Fedden's house in France in 1922) went to Leek and Thomas Todd Blaylock went to Bournemouth. So, why was Fletcher eligible for the post at Edinburgh? Like Crane, he had no qualifications. I can only assume the post of principal involved no classroom teaching. But there were ways round the system apparently. Walter Phillips only taught in private school in Britain but did gain employment at the Technical Institute in Winnipeg.

So, why didn't Royds teach colour woodcut at Edinburgh? ('Edinburgh Castle' above is her only print showing the city). Because she was employed on the fine art course and colour woodcut was taught on the applied arts course where Platt was head of department for a few years. The only Scottish colour woodcut artist I know of who trained under Platt, was Stevenson. I have never come across anyone else, though I assume others may have studied the technique.

Going back to the Royal College, the most famous modern artist to have come out of the British system is David Hockney. He began at Bradford, then went on to the R.C.A. and Hockney, for all his Celtic exuberance, retains an academic feel to this day. Another popular and accessible artist is Eric Ravilious who trained at Eastbourne and only got into the R.C.A. by chance when a successful candidate dropped out. Unbelievably, there were no entrance exams as there were for the Beaux Arts in France. Instead, each school was allowed two places per year and if you didn't get in, that was it. Even then, Ravilious was assigned to the applied arts department not fine art.

In its defence, one of the great strengths of the British system was its draughtsmanship based on drawing from the model, although this was by and large imported from France by artists who has studied at the academies in Paris. This takes us back to Fletcher who not only studied in Paris, but went on to take a life class at the Central School.

Fletcher's legacy depends on this handbook published in 1916 (above) and which ran to three editions. Possibly in defence of Fletcher, Arthur Rigden Read said that everything he knew came from that man. This is unlikely to be entirely true, because he must have learned something from Urushibara, too. But it does suggest he learned to make colour woodcuts using Fletcher's book. How many others did? I know for certain that Steven Hutchins did in the 1980s. So, as you see, there was a class in Edinburgh after all and it went by the name of 'Woodblock printing'.

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Not surprisingly, there has been comment about the change in font size on the blog and I want to reassure readers that the change of size within some of the individual posts is not an eccentricity, but a failure on my own part to control the new system adequately.

I remain open to suggestions from readers, but I may not be able to reproduce the flawless script of this alabaster plaque from the 1570s at the Priory Church of St Michael at Breedon-on-the-Hill, Leicestershire. Nor will I be entertaining you in Tudor Latin.

For the historians and place-name enthusiasts amongst you, Breedon partly derives from the British word 'briga'. The most recent scholarship by Alan James, who now lives at Kirkcudbright, is definitive. He says it means 'a fortified place'. The church is built within a defensive compound of something like the second or first century BC. 

                                              

S.G. Boxsius for sale by auction

                                                                           

Coming up on 18th January at Bearnes in Exeter are two fairly early colour linocuts by S.G. Boxsius. The main attraction will be his early technicolour masterpiece, Rain, St. Michael's Mount, depicting the famous island at the end of its causeway underneath some of the most improbable cloud and light effects in colour print history. The colours are intensely weird, the detail sublime. Be warned, though. The premium is 36%, including tax.

Boxsius began exhibiting work at the Royal Academy in 1913, soon after he graduated from the Royal College of Art, but no prints appeared until Rain, St. Michael's Mount was exhibited at the Royal Society of Arts in 1928. It was then sent to the Graver Printers in 1930. Why this happened, I do not know. William Giles was probably his teacher during his first period of study at the R.C.A. between 1898 and 1899. Giles thought well enough of Boxsius to ask for an article about linocut for 'The colour print journal'. The feeling was mutual. Aside from the coastline of Cornwall, the main inspiration for Rain, St. Michael' Mount was Giles' ravishing Rainbow, Isle of Jura (above) made after a visit he and his wife made to Jura in 1922. Typically, Boxsius turned the whole thing on its head and took Giles' very large print and reduced its size considerably. (He went on to do the same thing with Georges Seurat's Bathers, Asnieres acquired by the Tate Gallery from the French collector and dealer, Felix Feneon in 1926.)

The second print in the sale is Ruins at Walberswick (above) which I have written about already. I tend to think it shows the influence of Elizabeth Keith's East Gate, Seoul. It also became a model for an early Eric Slater print. Anything by Boxsius is worth having. What you will have to pay is another thing. But we can all take this as an indicator of how prices are going. Judging by the Slater fetching £500, it does not necessarily mean they are rising. 

Frances Blair: woodcuts, linocuts and a check-list

                                                                        

It is now ten years since I posted on the Scottish artist, Frances Merritt Blair (1881 - 1954) and in that time no new images of her colour prints have appeared online (so far as I know). This obviously means that her work is rare and may help to explain why The brown sail (above) went for a relatively low price when it came up for auction in this country in the autumn.

I decided the best way forward was to publish a check-list of all the recorded colour prints made by this very attractive and able artist and to add any further details I have picked up about her career since I last wrote about her.

                                                         

It will not be much. She exhibited prints in Scotland, England, the U.S. and Australia between 1925 and 1946. Part of the time at least, she was working in Cornwall, with Helen Stevenson acting as contact from her home on Comiston Drive in Edinburgh. In February, 1926, Blair exhibited alongside Stevenson and Iain MacNab at the Society of California Printmakers and where Cornish cream shop (above), a depiction of Harris' dairy in Penzance in Cornwall, was bought by the Los Angeles Museum. In the November she became a member of the Society of Scottish Artists in their applied art section. There was also New colour woodcuts at the Grosvenor Gallery in Sydney in 1929 alongside two other stylish artists, namely Margaret Preston and Norbertine von Bresslern Roth.

Blair was working in Cornwall in the mid-twenties only and went back to live in Edinburgh where Jim Barnes has discovered various addresses for her. But that is about all the biography we have.

Cornish cream shop has been described as a linocut, but I cannot tell from the image what it is. No-one researching Blair has come up with any further references to lino. Nevertheless, it is still worth giving a basic rundown of what was happening in Scotland and England in regard to colour print. The early history of colour linocut for either country has not so far been published until now. So, here it is.

In 1921, Claude Flight made two colour linocuts, L'Arc de Triomphe and Trinity College and St. John's Chapel. The same year, there was an exhibition of child art (including linocuts) from the children's art class held at the School of Applied Arts in Vienna where the colour linocut artist, Hugo Henneberg, was a teacher. That same year, Dryad Crafts in Leicester published a pamphlet by Allen Seaby called Handprinting in colour. Probably Anna Hotchkis' Autumn in Galloway was made about the same time. The subject is Little Boreland at Gatehouse of Fleet. Hotchkis was a regular visitor to Kircudbright between 1915 and 1922 when she left Scotland to teach in China.

Following the child art exhibition, Flight radically changed style and made Trawler down the wave and Swing-boats (both 1921) using a vigorous, modern manner. In 1924, the Graver Printers in London showed colour linocuts for the first time, including de B. Lockyer's Near Vevey and Evening afterglow, Bordighera. The latter title is evidently influenced by William Giles who then asked S.G. Boxsius for an article about linocut for The Colour Print Journal in 1925 or thereabouts. This was never published, because the journal folded, but the same year Dryad brought out Seaby's Colour printing in linoleum and woodblocks.

Meanwhile, Glasgow became the first British school of art to put linocut on the syllabus when Chica McNabb included the medium in her course on relief print methods. This only ran between 1926 and 1927 when McNabb married and gave up work. That year, her brother, Iain, asked Flight to take a weekly class at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London. In 1927, Flight also published Lino-Cut. This was based on a series of articles he had written to promote the use of lino among artists rather than for use in schools and is the most important book written about linocut during the period.

The whole issue surrounding the use of wood and lino was beset with the kind of invective, snobbery and doctrinaire purism that the 1920s were so good at. It is in equal parts hilarious and infuriating.

Whatever the medium was Blair used, the approach is interesting. Look at the way she handles both the boats, the sail and the way she groups the houses across the bay. This way of looking at her subject was even more pronounced in her view of Harris' dairy in Penzance. The two prints are more mature than their faux naif style suggests. 

The check-list below has all the information available to me and includes contributions relating to English sources by Alan Guest from the 1980s while Jim Barnes recently supplied the same number of records for Scotland. For further information about the history of colour linocut, see the posts about Hugo Henneberg and Chica MacNabb.

Mousehole colour woodcut. Royal Scottish Academy 1925, Los Angeles 1926.

Cornish cream shop colour linocut, 1925. Los Angeles and Royal Glasgow Institute 1926. Illustrated The Studio, 1927, p 435.

The little bridge colour woodcut. Royal Scottish Academy and Graver Printers 1925.  

At the Trossachs Graver Printers, Royal Glasgow Institute and Los Angeles, 1926

The brown sail colour woodcut. Graver Printers 1927 and Royal Scottish Academy 1935.

The woods o' Dee colour woodcut. Royal Scottish Academy and Royal Glasgow Institute 1927, Graver Printers 1928.

Lairig Pass Royal Glasgow Institute 1927. 

Blue Waters of Lorne colour woodcut. Royal Glasgow Institute 1929, Graver Printers 1930, Royal Scottish Academy, 1935.

Old mill of Gairn Aberdeen Artists Society 1929.

Flamboyant trees colour woodcut. Graver Printers 1931.

Hen farm Colour Woodcut Society 1931.

Horse range gorze, New Zealand. Colour Woodcut Society 1931.

Up a hill in Devon colour woodcut. Royal Scottish Academy, Graver Printers, Colour Woodcut Society 1931, Royal Glasgow Institute 1932.

A lane in Devon colour woodcut. Royal Scottish Academy 1932.

East Lothian Aberdeen Artists Society 1932.

White sand, Morar colour woodcut  Royal Glasgow Institute 1932.

Evening, Morar  Colour woodcut. Royal Glasgow Institute 1934, Graver Printers 1935.

A Sussex mill  Graver Printers 1935.

 

 

The colour linocuts of Berta Coucke

                                                                                    

I suspect your first reaction to Flemish artist, Berta Coucke, and her colour linocut Les deux chateaux (above) that at last here is one of those Grosvenor School artists who is talented and likeable. As usual with many of the women who studied at the Grosvenor, there is no evidence that she did apart from the obvious Grosvenor techniques she employed and that some of her work toured with the Fourth exhibition of British linocut in 1933.

Claude Flight had left the Grosvenor three years previously, but the technique of basing images on drawings, trying out various blocs of colour, using a roller and overprinting the whole paper more or less, suggests she did train with him. The style of the prints also suggests she knew the work of Lill Tschudi.

The skinny, would-be modern figures (above) are typical of the style Flight himself was using in the late twenties. More intriguing is the manner of Les deux chateaux. This is also comparable to Flight's work of about 1932 and 1933 when he returned to more conventional landscape after he visited Tschudi in Switzerland. But as always with Grosvenor, the individuality of the artist is obscured by the prescriptive approach of the teacher. But then, they were all there for too short a time to develop and the class was held only once a week.

I know nothing more about her but I can tell you the preparatory drawing at the bottom turned up on ebay so it is worth bearing in mind that pages from her sketch-book are about. The fortune-teller (above) has the chic of French graphic art of the 1920s. But there is also a hint of the teacher-student relationship. By all accounts, Flight was an enthusiastic and engaging teacher who treated everyone like artists, but it was nevertheless impossible for them to avoid the forcefulness of his approach.

These are quite canny prints and it is a shame there are not more of them about. The final image of the dancers (above) suggests an artist who was half-way to genuine abstraction and who gift for design and colour. My guess from all this is that Couke's real interest was in fashion. Before the war, the students on the fashion course at the Wiener Werkstaette had been asked to use colour linocuts in their portfiolios and the dancers above gives you an idea why.

Thanks are due to Paramour Fine Art for Les deux chateaux and to Larkhall Fine Art for The fortune-teller. It is £600. The dancers are in the Fine Art Museum of San Francisco

Eric Slater at auction

I was surprised to see Eric Slater's colour woodcut The Avenue sold for only £500 in the autumn. As readers will know, I am not a big fan of Slater, but this print is one of his better landscapes and it does not appear to be faded. Possibly Slater has had his day, but it also strikes me people may be holding back. It was the same story with the Rigden Reads that sold in Gloucestershire in October. Many were not in all that good condition, although that has not put people off in the past. The highest price was £900 for his most illustrious print and like Slater, Read was getting a thousand easily at one stage.

According to James Trollope, The Avenue dates from circa 1936, which puts it towards the end of his career making colour woodcuts. The last one appeared in 1938 and by the time he made The Avenue, the images were more subtle and sophisticated than previously. As there is no colour image of the print in 'Slater's Sussex' and nothing of a reasonable size online, I thought this was well worth putting up. Perhaps now is the time to buy. 

On holiday with Helen Stevenson

                                                                       

                                                                               

Like S.G. Boxsius, Helen Stevenson was one of those artists who did her best work after visiting somewhere on holiday. This is not meant to imply that she was in some way an amateur, but like Boxsius, she had a job as a teacher of art and the places she made the subjects for her colour woodcuts were far-removed from the place where she worked. But then Edinburgh was not a colour-woodcut place. It appears only once in the work of Mabel Royds and once in John  Platt (Murrayfield presumably). Stevenson looked westwards, to the braes, glens and lochs of Argyll and the Isle of Arran, off its southern coast. 

In Brodick Bay (top) was exhibited with the Graver Printers in London in 1930, following The coal boat (above) in early 1929. As both prints depict locations on Arran, she presumably visited the island in 1928. What is striking about the later print is how much more accomplished it is. Perhaps Stevenson realised there was not enough happening in The coal boat and went looking for ideas from another source. If anything, by comparison, In Brodick Bay has too much to say for itself.  

Brodick is the main town on the island and the place where the ferry arrives and most of the hotels are located, so it made an obvious and convenient subject. And notice how carefully she was followed by Boxsius in Bowsprits (1933), The Waterwitch (1934) and The bargeman (above). It was in Boxsius' approach to copy and expand (and improve on). More to the point is what he ignores (or misses). In Brodick Bay has an unmistakeable reference to the work of Hokusai in the stylised use of Prussian blue. The Boxsius way is almost always more art deco than Stevenson, his wife is a modern wife, engaging with the locals. Stevenson's characters are only absorbed in what they are doing. She has left the self-consciousness of Comiston Drive (where she lived) behind her.

In Brodick Bay  works on two levels (if not three). There is the sense of scale achieved by using larger and smaller boats and the complexity of human life set against the bare fell across the bay. What artists like Stevenson and Boxsius rarely achieved was the very different visual take on life summarised by Hokusai in his comic view of shipwreck from 36 views of Mount Fuji, c 1830 - 1832 (above). Note how the Scottish artist emphasises the foreground and relates it to the background where she leaves us to compare Goatfell with Mount Fuji, if we so wish. The Japanese artist, meanwhile, has no foreground to speak of and gives the mountain an area to itself. The outlandish scale is made to suggest his boat is an Ark come aground, or a sea-monster. For him, Fuji is both in the immediate foreground and superior to everything else.