Tales from ebay: Siegfried Berndt's 'Auf der Rehde'

It is somehow rewarding to see a print that has been recently featured on the blog come up for sale on ebay. I'm not suggesting there is a connection but from Germany we have Siegfried Berndt's first version of the colour woodcut Auf der Rehde from 1911. This is the ebay print above; I have added, below, the proof that I used on the post, for comparison.

I'm never sure why it is that sellers don't get the image square but it doesn't always fill me with confidence. But one important thing included, all the same, is the full paper size, which shows the deckle edge at the bottom. But the image isn't signed and so far there has only been one bid so that it stands right now at €1 only. Unfortunately, the dealer also adds Blatt im unteren linken Teil etwas knittrig,  as you can see below:

                                                                                  
Now, this creasing detracts but I don't want to go on about the disadvantages because, etwas knittrig or not, this is a fine print, romantic and well-expressed, and well worth having depending on how you feel about creases. I've bought unsigned and imperfect images of German work in the past because they are interesting to have and can be expensive otherwise. As for the change in the colours you can see, his version from 1925 (see August post) is radically different. He experiemented, as I said in the post. This is one of the most attractive things about Berndt. He never really stayed the same. And if you already have one version of this print, it may be wise to buy another. I am only waiting now for a deluge of versions. Go!

Tales from ebay: Krebs in close-up plus an Adolf Kunst

As there has been more interest than expected in Otto Krebs, here is an image of the Schneider bookplate with more detail. The work is so well-printed, I begin to wonder all over again whether he had the help of a printer. One thing that makes me think this is an image by the German architect and printmaker, Adolf Kunst,  which shows a man using a printing press. I think I own one of these though I'm not sure. But below, a full size colour woodcut by Kunst. This came up for sale recently on ebay and went for the bargain price of €23. Apparently, it's in alot better condition than one I have. During the 1920s Kunst adopted a fairly raw technique which I sometimes feel uneasy about in his prints but like alot in the bookplates. He made alot of these  and one or two are well worth buying.

                                                                                       
During the twenties, Kunst adopted a rather  more raw style of cutting. These images can be a touch crude (his training comes out in his choice of subject) but when his prints are in good condition, the colours jump off the paper as fresh as the day they were printed. And this is something people who are sniffy about ex libris should consider: although bookplate collectors had some nasty habits when it came to mounting their bookplates (dabbing them down with glue, trimming the margins, sticking them onto backing card - all details sellers can somehow omit in their descriptions), the prints themselves are often clean and bright simply because they have been kept away from the light. I'm glad I bought a few when I could.

Tales from ebay: Otto Krebs

Out of interest, a couple of small colour woodcuts by the Swiss maker of ex libris, Otto Krebs (1870 - 1955). There were one or two artists making bookplates using colour woodcut in Switzerland early in C20th. All of them were pretty good but I have to admit Krebs work hadn't made much of an impression untill now. The Dutch dealer sur-sum, who has these two prints for sale, nevertheless can come up with some fairly impressive prices - but then these works are for specialist collectors. (That isn't to say that sur-sum isn't affordable and I have had one or two nice things from him). But the Schneider plate has an asking price of about £50 (it's in US dollars). The Goldman is about £28 which is not such a bad price for what is, after all, a subtle piece of work - the varying greens are striking. That said, the Schneider is just as good as some British colour printers (if not better) - Phillip Needell images of Chateau Gaillard and Corfe Castle come to mind and even some of Isabel de B Lockyer's landscapes. The seller has these down as circa 1910 and I know he is knowledgeable about these things. But for most of us these images will actually be just too small for all their skill.

What lets them down are two things: the borders and the lettering. They in no way compare to Alfred Peter's borders which are as good as the images themselves and are always well-integrated. I have one treasured little piece where the image is surrounded by large feathers. With Peter, less is also more. Perhaps Krebs felt the need to set off the complex landscapes with rather severe and uncompromising surrounds. It's when artists make good use of simple devices and three or four colours, as both Peter and Fritz Mock did, that you know just how good they are. But here, for Herr Schneider, it's the detail, of course, that appeals.

John Platt: art & the engineer

You are a first year engineering student at the university of Manchester. One day a lecturer suggests you become an architect because you draw so well. But you drop architecture and decide on the life of an artist instead. Look at this wonderful photograph of IK Brunel and J Scott Russell taken at the launch of the SS Great Eastern at Millwall in 1858 and you will see the heroic image of the Victorian engineer. Was John Platt (1886 - 1967) just an imaginative young man who someone recognised would never be one of them?

He trained from 1903 to 1909, eventually graduating from the Royal College of Art. He had also become a fellow of the national society of art masters and we have to assume he had always intended to become a teacher. Even more interesting is this: he made no colour woodcuts untill his time in the army (1914 - 1918).  In Derbyshire, near Matlock (1917) was only his third. It isn't any easier to try and work out how an officer in the British army began to make exceptional prints as it is to identify exactly where he found this view. But it is recognisably Platt in its love of detail and the distance.

                                                                                 

By the time he came to cut The Giant Stride in 1918, he was taking one of the biggest steps in modern British printmaking. Here, at only his fourth attempt, he made one of the most memorable and dramatic images of all. Almost everything went into it: his own children, his tremendous draughtsmanship, his fascination for dynamics, his love of the sea and boats. (The image is poor but that's a sailing ship and a steam ship in the distance.) It's one of those seminal works that artist's create from time to time: an image of the creative act itself.

                                                                                 

It took him another two years to come up with Snow in springtime (1920). There was a print called Dawn in 1918 but with few proofs printed. His prints were a success but he was hardly prolific. He is very far from the modern artist knocking off bold, experimental images. All his printmaking life he remained true to the ideals of craftsmanship. But he also had to make a living as a teacher, moving from one art college to another: Harrogate, Derby then to Edinburgh in 1920.

                                                                                   
                                                                                   
This was a bold enough move in itself because Frank Morley Fletcher appointed him to the part-time post of head of applied arts, partly on the strength of  two very good prints. His training was wide but his experience actually strikes me as limited. No matter, he was there in Edinburgh alongside two of the best contemporary printmakers - Mabel Royds and Fletcher himself. It's this woodcut, The Scrum (1921) that convinces me that it was the heroic that captivated his imagination. There is already a strong feel for it in the exhuberance of children's play. But here we have the ancient Greek hero, controposto and all, turned out in a Scotland team jersey. The image comes from the time he spent in Edinburgh and this must show a game there, against either England or Wales, I assume - there is always more to Platt than meets the eye. He thought about his images with care. It's also highly original. Try and imagine Siegfried Berndt sketching at Murrayfield while he was studying in Scotland. But at least Berndt made three woodcuts of Scotland. What Platt gives us, though, isn't the Scottish landscape; it's the Scottish people (and their neighbours).

                                                                               
With Staithes, Yorkshire (1927) we are on woodcut number sixteen only. Six of those, including this one, take boats and harbours as their subject. The first was The jetty, Sennen Cove from December, 1921, the same year as The scrum. Most are humble fishing boats and trawlers, though there are also more exotic craft at St Tropez. What we never get is the sheer obvious love of it all so apparent in the work of Ethel Kirkpatrick and Siccard Redl. This image is a module, a set of interrelationships between form, colour and perspective. I chose this image, which is well-known, because heroism is still implied in the life of the people who live and work at Staithes. With Platt we are captivated by his sheer skill but should not forget there is also a teacher at work.

                                                                                                                                             

Teacher, and also father, because I wonder if the young woman shown here in The fruit harvest adopting a truly classical and heroic pose, is his daughter, Anthea. She would have been seventeen when he produced this copper engraving in November, 1929. Few artists, as I've said before, master both relief and intalgio methods. Platt did, but I think the engravings give away some of the weaknesses less apparent in his colour woodcuts. And I mean something of a well-made but sterile feel you find so often in the work of artists who are also teachers. The young woman stares away from us much like the young rugby player but is more impersonal than him. She is as absorbed in herself as the children were. Platt, like the smaller children, looks on - and makes us look, too.

I must acknowledge a considerable debt to Hilary Chapman's The colour woodcuts of John Edgar Platt (1999) and also credit Annex Galleries for In Derbyshire, near Matlock.

Two tales from ebay: Katsunori Hamanishi

And as we were talking about the Japanese mezzotint artist, Katsunori Hamanishi, here are two smallish bookplates by him up for sale on Dutch ebay. I'm afraid I was unable to enlarge the images onsite so this was the best I could do. He a master, fastidious and compelling, and this is an opportunity at a starting bid of €19.50 - not too bad because I think I paid about £17 for one. All his ex libris are signed. No bids as yet but the auction finishes about 8.30 pm tomorrow.There are two others. If you aren't familiar with his work, there are lots of images online.

Tales from ebay: Ohara Koson

And as if by magic a photograph so poor I had to check the signature against my own prints. But to me this looks like Ohara Koson. It's on ebay in Germany, comes up, I think, on Wednesday and still stands at €1, believe it or not. The drawback? As ever with German sellers, he doesn't take PayPal. (You try to explain to them my bank charges £25 for an international money order but to no effect).

Meryl Watts, John Platt & Blackheath School of Art

John Platt (1886 - 1967) arrived at his last teaching job in 1929 when he was forty-three. Before he came to Blackheath, he had held senior positions at Edinburgh College of Art as head of applied arts (1920 - 1923) and at Leicester College of Art as principal (1923 - 1929). It was the part-time position at Blackheath that attracted him, probably as it had done at Edinburgh. He had begun to make colour woodcuts in 1916 but had produced only seventeen by the time he settled into his top-floor studio, smock and all, in south London.

He wasn't prolific; he was meticulous instead. He had started out training as an engineer at Manchester University but was persuaded to go for the art option on the strength of his drawing - and please bear in mind that this was technical drawing, he wasn't at the Slade or anywhere.  I say all this so you can get a feel for the kind of regime that Meryl Watts (1910 - 1992) found herself in when she enrolled. When this was, I don't know for sure - about 1930. She was good enough by 1933 to be accepted as a member of the Society of Graver-Printers in Colour.
                      

                                                                                      

My hunch is that the fuzzy snow-scene you can see above was her first version of the school building. It has something rather strict in common with this kitchen interior, below, and another woodcut she made of a flower seller. Both of these prints rely heavily on the keylock for definition. The interesting thing about her view of the school is that the keyblock is only used to frame the print. This must be the influence of Platt himself. Also interesting is the way she simplifies the facade, removing the brick arches above the first and second floor windows but then adding pediments on the top floor windows. (The image is reversed). Nor does she differentiate between the two types of brick.

                                                                                     

Platt had gradually begun to abandon the use of the keyblock between 1927 and 1932 and in the top image you can see the effect on his student in her use of planes of flat colour and recession to build up the picture. I also think that the collage, below, was work produced by her as a student under Platt's instruction. Though I have no proof of this it is her work.

                                                                                     

A number of these tissue collages her by exist, all using the muted greens and brows that became so prevalent in the 1930s. (This one is remarkably similar to his woodcut Sails, 1933). We might see a more subtle sign of his influence in the way she made three versions of her woodcut of the school building. This was very much in line with Platt's own method. It took him so long to produce prints, it's no wonder he then made alternative versions. But her own print is so simple by comparision, in some ways it hardly merits that kind of attention.

                                                                                       
I don't want to disparage Watts too much by drawing attention to this parental figure. All the same, it's striking that 1930 was quite late in the day to start learning colour woodcut. (And I don't know of anyone else who was taught the technique by Platt at this time). Having said that, I like the blue image, which ignores alot of the architectural detail, the best. You have to work out for yourself if it is the third one she made.

                                                                                     

But was the influence all one way? Platt's approach had begun to change before he arrived at Blackheath and I've already suggested that it was Charles Paine's use of animal imagery that had a decisive influence on Platt. We have no way of knowing really what he learned from his student's work. But by the time Watt's came to make her Chestnut Seller she could make an image just as striking as Platt's - and, let's face it, he did make some of the most memorable images in British printmaking. It's hardly any wonder she stayed so long in his shadow. Her own father owned a printing works nearby. She wasn't one to stray too far from home. As I said, I would think all these images are local to her.

                                                                                      


Even her pelican was nearby. She only had to go to St James Park in London to find them on the lake. Platt or no Platt, this is a fine image, with a lovely use of the grain of the wood at the bottom. Subtle, modern, modulated, beautifully modelled, she has got into her stride. I think it is just a shame that as she moved on to north Wales, the oddness of her images starts to prevail. Flounder I like less.

                                                                                     

It is less modern that it looks. It's a pretty picture rather than analysis. To me, her later work shows she never really understood the modernist outlook - or that she just abandoned it, the way one abandons the keyblock. The print is also the work of a modeller. (She studied under the sculptor, James Woodford).

                                                                                
In some ways she was the permanent student and once  away from the institution, she loses direction. These two later prints of the Welsh landscape, for all their skill, are a touch stilted and fussy. I wonder also whether Flounder shows the influence of yet another of her teachers, the designer of stained glass, Charles Paine? Who knows? It is a refractory work nonetheless; everything shines through.