Yours truly, LH Jungnickel (1881 - 1965)

It's not possible to cover the work of this fertile artist in one post so I'm starting off today with some early bio and a set of postcards he did around 1907 for the Wiener Werkstaette and hope they entertain you as much as they do me. Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel was born in Oberfranken in Bavaria, not far from the border with Austria-Hungary but moved with his family to Munich where he eventually studied for a year at the Kunstgewerbeschule. Following that he took a typically erractic course through the top art schools of Munich and Vienna with long character-forming trips to Italy and Hungary in between. He left for Italy in 1898. In Naples and Rome he provided himself with income by drawing portraits for tourists, at the same time gaining access to the Vatican collections through the archaeologist Orazio Maruchi. The authorities were so impressed with the copies he made of the old masters, they suggested a career in church painting and sent him off to the monastery of Tanzberg in Klagenfurt to train. Possibly Jungnickel was biding his time and rather predictably his monastic training didn't last and by 1900 he was working as a graphic designer at the Stollwerck chocolate factory in Cologne. At the end of the day, he was still only nineteen. His cockeral poster lets us know he had already developped his lifelong affinity with animals. More studying followed and once back in Vienna, he became part of Klimt's circle which brought him into contact with Josef Hoffman, the director of the Wiener Werkstaetter. He began working for them in 1908 though was never made a member.

The set of six postcards would have been made some time after that. Everyone made them, including Hoffman, Kokoschka and Jungnickel's friend Egon Schiele. I include one of Schiele's efforts (above) because you can see just what happened to one idea ie a young woman in an overlarge hat. Schiele is of course a master, no doubt about that, and very po-faced, but his postcards are more or less mini-paintings while Jungnickel took the opportunity of the scale to make small ironic statements that are entirely graphic.

My favourite is the one I've put first - the young lady cowering in front of the indignant blue parrot. The pair of feathers in her hat are a nice touch. All in all, they provide amusing social commentary and acute knowingess about fashionable young ladies. They are also up-to-the-minute. You can just imagine what the monks at Klagenfurt made of him.

Another nice ironic touch is the reluctant little dog and the young lady with the fox muff. Perhaps the dog thinks that he is next. Her velours hat is really quite extraordinary. I can't say for sure what the technique is but I would guess it is line drawing, a sophisticated means of reproduction that was used in Austria and Germany during the Jugendstil/art nouveau and Secessionst period - untill artists began using lino and wood some time after 1905.

Which brings me round to his equally entertaining and quite superb wooodcuts, which he began to make about 1907. They will have their own post very soon. There will be a few more elegant young Viennese but even more of the incorrigible creatures they went to see at the zoo. One thing you can also be sure of - you can just forget all about Koson and Seaby.

Allen Seaby: the later years

Having left London to go and work at Reading, Allen Seaby eventually bought a plot of land at the small place of Tiptoe in Hampshire. Tiptoe lies in the New Forest which still has large areas of common grazing and woodland that make a home for one of the native breeds of pony. It was both the ponies and birdlife that attracted him and he set about building a hut for himself and his family and began recording the wildife all around it.

I would guess he also made trips to Exmoor and Dartmoor and perhaps even as far as Shetland to see the different breeds that lived there. He had become an enthusiast for the conservation of native ponies, believing that 'We can only be sure that our native British ponies are, like ourselves, of Celtic origin'. Surprisingly, in a way, they provided the subject for only three of his colour woodcuts, the one above of the Exmoor breed, the one below for Dartmoor (it's the central section) and Shetland. No doubt he realised he hadn't set himself an easy task, depicting both a herd of ponies and where they lived. He adds a touch of windswept nobilty but they remain nice if uneventful as pictures. He also admitted to the 'agony of composition' so I think picture-making didn't come naturally. Even so, they are intimate and personal in a way some of his other work is not. And this, really, is the aim of the post, to bring out a quieter side to Seaby's work.

If it also brings out his limitations, well, it does. I think the monochrome print of rabbits at the head of the post is a fine piece of work - domestic, unpretentious and wonderfully realised. Urushibara's rabbits are more stylish but much less like actual rabbits than Seaby's. But his landscapes with ponies rely on the keyblock for modelling. He's a wonderful printer and colourist but a conventional draughtsman and they tend towards colour-by-numbers. That said, if I could have the Shetland ponies back that I once sold, I would - though preferably not laid down this time.

This is the Seaby hut at Tiptoe. Perhaps when it was too wet to go out and draw, he stayed inside and wrote because in the early twenties he became a prolific writer. He was particularly well-known for his 'Skewbald' series for children set in the New Forest but also wrote Welsh and Exmoor pony books. He was well aware of the changes in the lives of the ponies. There are stories of wild ponies that are brought onto farms and when they are no longer of use there become beach or circus ponies. Afraid at the time that the native breeds had outlived their usefulness and would die out, he wanted to interest children in the the hope that they would want to ride them.

I think you can just make out that 'Exmoor Lass' was published in 1928. The illustration below is from a Dartmoor series. I have to admit that I've not read any of the books but they have been described as 'rambling and episodic' which just goes to show that the lives of native ponies and bloggers are really quite similar.

There may be other reasons why Seaby began to write so much. It may be as the twenties came to a close even his prints failed to sell. As few of them have dates, for me it's hard to tell where many come in his career. His Dartmoor ponies are certainly from 1927 and for those of you who don't want to lose sight of the Japanese Seaby, a woodcut with a crow and a fox, followed by one of a hare.

'Our ponies' was one of the Puffin Picture book series and it's a shame Seaby didn't get to use lithography for them. This was published in 1949.

He finally published two editions of British Birds and their nests in 1953 and 1954. This was part of a ground-breaking project by Ladybird Books in Britain. Untill then, they had only published in a cheaper format and Seaby was chosen for the obvious first topic to interest children in native wildlife. He was 86 the year of the second edition and I think we can forgive him if he did fall back on a woodcut design.

It's not exactly the same as the cover. But it is close to Walther Klemm's kingfisher of 1913 (see Walther Klemm: a book of birds). It's a fine image, Japanese in feel and more true to a kingfisher than Klemm would be. And this is where his achievement was remarkable. He stayed true to his subject while he approachesd them either with bravura as we saw in the last post or subtlety as we see here. They may all be of animals and perhaps his style became set but he was able to work at different levels. He was pragmatic.

To finish off, here vare the Shetland ponies in their Celtic homeland, what he called 'the high, far and lonely islands'. He was a countryman by adoption but there speaks the native Londoner. And that brings us to Eric Hesketh Hubbard, another Londoner. His version of the New Forest is coming next.

Allen Seaby (1867 - 1953): a sort of magic

AW Seaby was a sort of late Victorian. A Londoner by birth, he must have trained as a painter but where no one seems to know. What is certain is this: he moved to Reading in Berkshire where he fell under the spell of Frank Morley Fletcher (1866 - 1950) who was a teacher at the university college. Or he may already have trained under Fletcher, who was only a year older, at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. It wasn't the classic student/teacher relationship, which says alot about the rapid development of colour printing in Britain at the time. Like Ethel Kirkpatrick, he started as a painter but understood the opportunities that colour woodcut provided.

Fletcher is the ghost in the machine - both for this blog and others. He is famous for reading T Tokuno's article 'Japanese wood-cutting and wood-cut printing' (published by the Smithsonian in 1894) and then joining up with John Dickson Batten, to teach themselves how to make woodcuts using the Japanese method himself. This involved using cherry wood blocks, applying a watercolour based ink with a brush, printing without a press etc but neithern were so keen on Japanese style. If Morley Fletcher was quick to adapt, like other Londoners before him, Seaby had a good eye for character. In his case, he leant his considerable printmaking talents to birdlife. Personally, I've never been keen on his birds in flight but the secretive, searching behaviour of the ones here appeal very strongly. But then he was a naturalist. He knew them what they were like.

He obviously worked very hard and was well-thought of because by 1908 many of his early prints had been bought by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. 'Printmaking' as he put it, 'is a sort of magic very captivating to many minds'. This is true of his work. A Seaby impression in good condition has a brilliant, subtle surface and it isn't hard to imagine his own wonder as he pulled the prints. I have chosen close-ups because they show the sheer quality of his brushwork and the almost casual details. This makes him very much the late Victorian aesthete.

After becoming professor of Fine Art at Reading in 1920, he began to write. He obviously knew a great deal about different subjects. In one of is early books, 'Colour printing with linoleum and woodblocks' (1925) he says this about the making of colour prints: 'Wood is obviously superior to linoleum in many ways... Those who wish to take the craft seriously as a means of artistic expression should certainly use wood'. You have to assume that if he knew what the fashion department at the Vienna Workshops or, even worse, the members of Die Brucke were up to (see previous post), he chose to ignore it. He was an individualist and emphatically not a modernist. Interesting as well that his own grandson, Robert Gillmor (b 1936) is a notable contemporary linocutter. It's even more interesting that many of his books were for children, or teachers. Gillmor describes the memorable experience of seeing his grandfather at work in the studio and he had learned enough to publish his own work at the age of sixteen. Seaby's prints, like his birds, are innocent.

He observed children. As he says himself, the prints here are the very opposite of what they tend to do. His birds fill up the picture space in the way Japanese birds do; children are in the habit of drawing little people in big worlds (my paraphrase). He's the high art paternalist but can we blame him when he produces such beautifully sensational images as these? And from 1928 onwards, he began publishing his four volumes of 'Art in the life of mankind'. I have to say it sounds more Germanic than Japanese. In fact, when he draws or paints there is nothing Japanese about him at all. And when he tries figure subjects, the results are not always good. He produced an 'Adoration' where the attitudes of all concerned are very hackneyed indeed.

That image is stuck on my old pc - fortunately, in many ways - otherwise I would have shown it in the next post. Because I haven't finsished with AWS and his varied career just yet. There is more to him than birds. There are also rabbits and ponies.

Felice Ueno Rix (1893 - 1967): Japanland

Felice Rix isn't an obvious printmaker but she wasn't someone to let conventions like that bother her too much. Viennese by birth, she studied under the architect and designer Josef Hoffman (1870 - 1956), presumably at the Vienna University for Applied Arts. Hoffman had already played a very important part in the development of modern design, helping set up both the Vienna Secession in 1897, followed by the Wiener Werkstatte in 1905. Rix was a member of these Workshops when she made this linocut for a collective portfolio in 1914/1915. I think it stands out from the other prints - and not just for its elegance and wit.

Here is someone who was aware, a true stylist. You can see this from the woodcut from 1913 by the French artist Jean-Emile Laboureur (1877 - 1947). Her stiff, stylised postures and geometrical faces and patterns are alot like his. So much so, it's hard to know who was ahead of whom. Laboureur has Aubrey Beardsley and Felix Vallaton behind him as he adopts this newer linear style. Both artist and designer are cross-fertilising, moving briskly towards that hybrid style we now know as art deco. But it's the use of linocut by all the designers in the portfolio that is striking because it had first been adopted by the radical artists of Die Brucke - and then only after 1905. Before that it had only been used for wallpaper printing in Germany.

Here is Rix herself, possibly even sitting in a Josef Hoffman chair. As well she might because through the activities of Hoffman's practice, she met the Japanese architect Isaburo Ueno who had come to work under Hoffman in Vienna. I don't know whether Rix visited Japan before the couple were married in 1925 but she produced this printed silk called 'Japanland' for the Workshops in 1923.

The next silk fabric (unfortunately only a section) is also from 1923 and was called 'Tokyo' even though the Uenos moved to Kyoto once they were married. Rix went on designing fabric for the Workshops untill 1930 (they closed in 1933). After the war, she was professor of Fine Art at Kyoto University and was still teaching modern printmakers as late as 1957. Not surprisingly both husband and wife helped introduce modernism to Japan. She was Emil Orlik in reverse.

Josephine Siccard Redl (1878 - 1938): Istria

If any artist could be a perfect fit for this blog, the Austrian artist Josephine Siccard Redl may well be the one. I say Austrian but she was born in Prague and almost certainly spent only part of her adult life in Vienna. Siccards had been artists there as far back as the late C18th and she herself became a fairly standard colour woodcut artist. Then I take it she moved south to the coast of Istria. And I think it was Istria made her into a mature and quite exceptional printmaker.

 

The peninsula lies at the head of the Adriactic. When she was born, it was part of Austria- Hungary, with a population of Slovenes and Croations and people on the western coast who spoke a Romance language that is a cousin of modern Italian. This led to the province being given to Italy in 1919. The artist was certainly there some time after that. The first image is inscribed: 'Harbour of Laurana, Italy'. You can see the village marked on the map, across the gulf opposite Fiume. I have to assume she was living there, or in the area, because many of these prints have local connections, but I cannot be sure of this.

 

The boats are trabacole. They are Venetian luggers, with two masts and triangular, or lug, sails. You will see how well she handles the complex arrangement of masts and sails, rigging and bulwarks. Here is someone with a love of the sea and boats. It is her use of rich brown and gold that marks out this mature work. The boats also have the sturdy treatment of Carl Thiemann with subtle and striking rhythms across the picture plane.

 

This chapel by the sea is also near Laurana. I specially like the worn uneveness of the path and the shadow. The clarity of the light helps to explain why she went to Istria.

 

I couldn't be 100% sure that these are Istrian country women but they are drawn with such sympathy, I had to include them. Some Austrian artists at the time went in for images of country people and it's a shame we don't have more figure subjects by her. I like the way she insists on their privacy.

 

There is nothing shy about these daffodils. I suppose they were a subject she had to tackle at some point. They are stylised but unlike her contemporary English wood-engravers, she knows where to stop. What matters is the subject; the manner of representation is always subordinate. The broad brushwork on the gleaming Chinese jar is in vivid contrast to the jostling daffodils. She is the most painterly of all the colour woodcutters, even more than Thiemann.

 

One certain fact we have about her is that having come to Italy, she then left for Argentina, where she died at Rosario just north-west of Buenos Aires in 1938. We can only guess at the reasons. In 1922 Mussolini led the blackshirts on the march on Rome and by 1927 there was enforced Italianization of the population of Istria - no education in their own language, for instance.

 

This next ship is a nao. To be exact it's the 'Santa Maria' that carried Christopher Columbus to the Americas. Whether or not she made these prints in advance of the journey to Argentina or afterwards, I can't say, but I would say before. When I first saw them, I thought at first she had joined the ranks of the galleon artists - they were popular images during the 1920s and 1930s in Britain. But it shows real imagination to turn her attention to historic ships when she is going on a similar journey herself. This isn't the usual historical pastiche. The boat is lively and buoyant.

I have to say 'Bon voyage' until the next post with this last image of Columbus' three ships sailing off into a very Siccard Redl sunset. The 'Santa Maria', which Columbus had never been happy about, was to run aground in the shallows off Hispaniola where he abandoned it. I think you will agree that Josephine Siccard Redl also told a true if poetic story and kept afloat.

 

Walther Klemm: a book of birds

Anyone who has read a dozen or so posts on the blog will have realised I have a soft spot for central European printmakers working between about 1900 and 1930. This interest began quite casually with picking up prints in salerooms, junk shops or on the Portobello Road in London during the 1980s. Carl Thiemann, Helene Mass, Englebert Lap, Paul Leschhorn, the Frank brothers, Bresslern Roth - all of them were there. You might not have been able to read their signatures, but they were always stylish and sometimes dirt-cheap. And if you had to pay, they smacked of sophistication from beyond the river Rhine. As I said in the October post, a good Walther Klemm (1883 - 1957) was hard to find.

In 1912 he published his 'Vogelbuch' a portfolio of six colour woodcuts of European birds in an edition of only 40. He had already made a book of Prague street scenes but his bird prints owe far more to the example of the Japanese. Look at the work of his contemporary, Ohara Koson (1877 - 1945). Koson, only six years his senior, had generally stopped making woodcuts under that name in 1911. Many were of birds and were widely sold in Europe. The eagle (also picked up for next to nothing) isn't really typical but you see the form: concentration on a single image, a neutral background with few details, an unsentimental approach. This one would appeal more to the ornithologist than most. I don't think Klemm's would.

Klemm wasn't a naturalist. They are birds but he was also concerned with line, form and their relationship to space. The Japanese example that he had learned through Emil Orlik, suited him very well. If he knew Koson's work - and I would think that he did - it is even more interesting. For all that, these are European prints. Koson's line is much sharper than Klemm's. The rhythms and inwardness of Klemm - look at the way he describes the feel of the feathers and the atmosphere the birds live in - are really quite foreign to the Japanese artist. By comparison, Koson is almost shockingly objective.

Klemm uses the long Japanese image to suggest the kingfisher about to dive, the ducks doing so, but the sense of violent drama in Koson's eagle print in missing.

AW Seaby is also famous for his birds. But Seaby was a naturalist and his work still appeals to ornithologists. Ten years older than Koson, there is no sense of influence here. Klemm looks alot more Japanese. Seaby's work is a portrait of a bird in its environment. This is very British. He also avoids the neutrals of both Koson and Klemm. He talked about 'the tendency of our time to enjoy colour'. He also made this print in green and the blue strikes me pretty arbitrary. Klemm thought harder about what the Japanese were actually doing and was basically more abstract in the appproach he took to his work.

I wanted to include Klemm's complete set so people could see them all together. I think this ptarmigan is undergoing psychoanalysis. There is more of a sense of the instincts in Klemm than there is in Seaby.

The play of feathers in the game bird is beautifully Klemm, vivid and a bit bizarre. He likes the way wings stretch out for us to see. It's unexpected. I always think there is a bit more to Klemm than meets the eye. I don't think you would ever say that about Seaby.

I had to finish with the more usual kind of Koson. The frailty of the blossom and the crow's terrible beak and eye are masterly. His sense that something is about to happen, of vigour, and of the fleeting moment, is beyond most European artists. (I should also add that Joseph Fach in Frankfurt-am-Main currently have 'Vogelbuch' for sale. My thanks are due to them).