William Neave Parker (British, 1910 - 1961) animals before Adam

                                                      

Having made mention of William Neave Parker in the last post, I thought I should try and do him some justice. In our ignorance we used to regard him as an also-ran but as you see he was a skilled and flexible draughtsman, able to turn his hand to fine drawing, woodcut and linocut although it is by no means clear to me what method he was always using for his prints. Wild cat, like all his colour prints, is lino. Some are signed and some are not, but all of them were published trimmed as you see here. Many of them also come attached to a sheet, which again is original.

Despite his obvious skill, his father had refused to allow him to train as an artist and he found himself working in a bank where people were kept behind each night searching for errors - they were always his. Service in the RAF during the second war was followed by a request from the Natural History Museum in London to produce drawings to illustrate palaeontological reconstruction. He then also did work for the Illustrated London News from 1950 onwards. It would be easy enough to slip into mild satire but the bear has a nice sense of line and life - it's convincing - and oddly enough he does fit into the British tradition of animal illustration that begins with Thomas Bewick and works its way towards CF Tunnicliffe. I have seen it described as both wood-engraving and linocut but I am a bit dubious about both those claims.

His linocuts are often a touch crude but this is all the work of a man who had to train himself. This tiger is direct, daunting and well-proportioned. I have a friend with a fluid little weasal by him which I encouraged her to buy instead of buying it myself! He carried on working on childrens book illustration, specially the dinosaurs, which seem so true of the time, untill his own extinction in a cinema, aged 51.
 

Vadim Trofimov (Russian, 1912 - 1981)

We see very little of Russian printmakers so it's a pleasure to post on the colour woodcuts of Vadim Trofimov. I know absolutely nothing about him but assume he came from Siberia. As you see from his raw and impressive Siberian Tiger, he not only handled colour with subtlety, he gave his prints a tremendous sense of animal movement. It could be by the post-war British artist William Neave Parker (1910 - 1961) on a good day.

This reindeer calf dates from as late as 1960 so he was making prints as if the 1930s were still fresh in his mind. 'Urgent Mail' below has the same sense of vitality. In fact the prints are a strange combination of stealth, power, urgency and remoteness.

The monograms appear to be 'BM' and 'M' even though all the woodcuts are ascribed to him. Needless to say if anyone has anything more on Trofimov, please let me know. The pictures do enlarge well if you want to look at the details.

Frank Morley Fletcher: Woodblock Printing, 1916

Probably the closest any of us of very modest means will get to owning a colour woodcut like this one is a copy of Morley Fletcher's small handbook, Woodblock Printing. Not only was Morley Fletcher (1866 - 1949) a superb printmaker, for many years he also had a successful teaching career based on his practical knowledge of woodblock printing in the Japanese manner. Beginning with classes at London's Central School of Arts and Crafts, he progressed to University College, Reading where Allen Seaby (1867 - 1953) was also a teacher. 1907 to 1923 saw him director of Edinburgh College of Art where both Mabel Royds (1874 - 1941) and John Platt (1866 - 1947) were on the staff. In 1916 John Hogg published the first edition of his primer.

If you can find a copy of the book for sale, you also acquire this small print because it was included as an exemplar in each copy. The book was so successful it was reprinted by Pitman with the print below acting as exemplar. Interestingly enough, this second edition includes advertisements for pigments and tools. I can only assume the first book had had an effect. Fletcher left Edinburgh in 1924 to take up the post of first school director of the School of the Arts at Santa Barbara. He stayed there till 1930.

And just in case anyone should doubt a student could learn a technique as complex as Japanese woodcut from a handbook, Steven Hutchins, a dealer specialising in Japanese woodblock prints, once did exactly that. He also produced two very passable prints. A good deal is also made of Morley Fletcher's innovations and while I don't wish to belittle his significant work as a teacher, Emil Orlik went to Japan to study printmaking at the same time that Fletcher and John Dixon Batten (1860 - 1932) were experimenting in London. (Orlik's early career is summarised in an October posting). Unlike FMF, he didn't make a career out of woodcut but dropped them before the first war - Orlik was also a wonderful portrait etcher. Either you have it or you don't.

Tom Purvis ( British, 1888 - 1959) It's quicker by rail

Tom Purvis came from Bristol to study at Camberwell School or Art in south London. David Jones had also been a student there but their careers cannot have been more dissimilar. Whether or not he was taught by AS Hartrick (1864 - 1950) while he was there, I don't know. Hartrick was a painter and lithographer who had known Toulouse Lautrec and worked at the school from around 1908. After art school Purvis worked for the Mather & Crowther agency for 6 years before going freelance. Where he picked up his knowledge of the Beggarstaff Brothers advertising work of the mid nineties, I don't know (see below) but there's no doubt they were the starting point for his famous spare and simple style - and his signature. (And that's quite enough of the cliches).


His big break came when the British railways were re-organised in 1923 and he was taken on as a graphic designer by the London and North Eastern Railway who had a fair number of holiday resorts on their network along the eastern coast of England and Scotland. Their first advertising manager, William Teasdale, took his lead from the work of Frank Pick at the new London Underground where the designer Edward Johnston had been commissioned to produce a distinctive style for the whole operation in 1915.

The brief given to Purvis wasn't as comprehensive as Johnston's but he worked on everything from booklets to his celebrated posters, producing more than 100 by the time he left LNER in 1945. Facts and figures apart, Purvis' work is highly recognisable as was intended but the levels of intimacy and boldness vary. The East Coast Joys series are the most flagrant. Flat, colourful shapes pick out the human figure, often female and dressed in very little. The details are kept to minimum - sea-water, light. The message is equally straightforward: uncomplicated bliss is just a return ticket away. 'Harrogate' above is a good deal more sociable and subtle. The town is a well-heeled but old-fashioned Yorkshire spa but the appeal is to the young and active. The erotic range of pinks and the splash of orange are really quite something, Pimm's in poster form.

He could also do wholesome, as here. It's sometimes said he avoided trains and towns but the main idea here is to get across the fun of the journey. Everyone is framed and rather free of us. They are lucky. The boy's hand pressed against the window a true imaginative touch. The company's claim that it was quicker by rail was certainly true in their case. They ran the famous Flying Scotsman express to Edinburgh and their Mallard remains the fastest steam train on record. Below we have their class A4 locomotive designed in 1935. They even introduced two observation cars with a bar and deco trim. The stylishness follows through.

And, in case you didn't know, this is Purvis' superb version. LNER achievement is the modern message + all for your further comfort. A vanished age.

It did also surprise me to discover than you could hire a camping carriage (I think they should had Dorothy Burroughes on this one). The funny thing is the message here is contrary to almost all his other posters: cosy, even folksy. The carriage is very reminiscent of the ones people turned into weekend holiday homes. But the appeal of the outdoors runs right through the series as does the sense of sociability but freedom from restraint. (I think you have to turn to British comic postcards for mockery of this ideal).

Now here he is doing simplicity very well. I like the subtle shades of violet, pink and grey. He hits exactly the right note but it's one of the rare examples of him adding words to express the meaning. Like many other modernists, he tends to reject the literary.

Again, I think the poster for Cruden Bay is far better than his better known work. The addition of locals was common in both posters and postcards. It adds local colour for the modern visitor. Not often you get a caddie in a kilt and tam. This one just goes to show how good his figures were. Interesting, too, how many of the people look away from us towards something else. Placing figures both behind and in front of the letters is a typical device. The posters are not always quite as one dimensional as they are said to be.

And if you were wondering by now where all these fashionable people went when not on the beach or the links, I've included a couple of thirties buildings. First the De La Warr Pavilion at Bexhill-on-Sea in Sussex (1935, Mendelsohn and Chermayeff):

OK, it's not Miami but this villa at Frinton-on-Sea in Essex is no less moderne. Incidentally, quite alot of this architecture has been lost. I know of one example that has been re-vamped beyond recognition. I remember a glorious cafe cum sun lounge with a complete glass front that fell out of use during the war years than succumbed to the inevitable dereliction. It shows there was a market.

And I know some of you at least have only been waiting for the eighteen-year olds, so here they are:

It is certainly true that he very rarely gave men much prominence. This lifeguard looks like he's just escaped from the 1936 Olympics quite honestly. Lithography certainly lent itself to both broad strokes like the light along his arms but also subtle use of colour. I like the contrast of mauve and blue-green.

I assume this young woman is on the ferry from Harwich to Hook of Holland. Notable for its details - the perm, the pink shoes, etc. I don't think he was ever more outrageous than on this one. The shaded face is particularly stunning.

What is interesting is that this sense of individuality which is largely missing from the railway work comes to the fore in his work for the British outfitters, Austin Reed. I think this challenge to define at least a type of person brought about his best work. Nothing for me beats the young man at the head of the post, typically staring away from us, the relaxed hands a nice contrast to intent gaze. The blue coat casual beside him and redundant striped scarf are wonderful. (Tom Wesselman eat your heart out). In the poster below, the concentration around the hands - the tie, the violets - are equally clever, as is the coat suavely over his arm. They even have a narrative: he has bought violets for their scent, just come down Regent St in fact to a flower seller in Piccadilly.

And we have to save cheerio to Tom with this last image of a younger man actually buying a bunch of violets. We are back with William Nicholson's London Types updated for the twentieth century. It's as exactly placed in the centre of town as the stripe of the tie and the cane under his arm. For all the blather about boldness and simplicity in his work, it's this insouciance and understatement that makes his work such a joy.

Dorothy Burroughes at the zoo

I am grateful to Mike and Alison for exposing both my ignorance and poor memory (see the October post on Burroughes). As a result of a hint from them via Robin Garton, I can now offer all these delightful images by Dorothy Burroughes (c 1895 - 1963) - not to mention the scandalous titles. 'Queer birds at the zoo' dates from the early twenties. The lemur poster for Regent's Park is 1922.

No doubt the books were a success as I see Gladys Davidson wrote two. Here we have an ant-eater in profile. And below him or her, a splendid portrait of the artist herself in 1923.

She trained at the Slade and Heatherley's in London and also in Germany, not only doing fab linocuts but also making illustrations for The Bystander and the Illustrated London News. There are plenty of books illustrated by her out there as well.

Last but least this coolly fashionable creature, staring right back at us, poised, pristine, chic, perceptive. I am merely shameless.

Ian Cheyne: six more woodcuts

Gerrie Caspers has been on the look-out for Ian Cheyne woodcuts for us all to enjoy so I am combining the last short post on Cheyne with his latest finds. The first print here is the glorious 'Beeches at Glen Lyon' from 1937. It finds Cheyne in art deco mood, celebrating Scotland's longest glen. (It's in Perth and Kinross). A bold, masterly, wonderfully disciplined piece, it would convert almost anyone from Englebert Lap. Although I have never seen this next print before, I know it is called 'The wave' (rather than Tsunami as the auction house unfortunately described it). It's exactly the kind of dramatic scene that colour woodcut does so well. Virtuoso is the other term that comes to mind. 'Helmsdale' from 1933 below finds him back in more conventional, Hokusai mode. The fishing village is on the eastern coast of Sutherland and I've included Hokusai's 'The moon above Yodo River and Osaka Castle' by way of comparison. Very interesting the way Cheyne takes aspects of the Japanese print - the great bend of the river, the rusty-roofed houses, the fringing greenery to help define his own work.

Remarkable, too, the way he adapts another artist to depict the Scottish landscape he obviously loves so much. His own aerial viewpoint shifts the perspective to enhance the drama of the scene. The range of greens here are particularly wonderful.

I believe the print below is called 'St Monans'. The size was the best Gerrie could do but the subtlety is distinctively Cheyne. The bold cutting of the mountainside avoids the rather featureless effect you get in some later prints by John Platt. Also notice the way he picks up on the apricot colour in Hokusai and re-uses the little tent shape. This really is one artist responding to another.

A rather Mediterranean version of Scotland comes next. I mean I could swear those were olive trees. About as close as he gets to expressionism as well. And this one an almost entirely green woodcut. Always interesting, wonderfully planned, with the little road leading you into the picture. It's a typically Cheyne touch. He sweeps you up in his pattern-making but never loses sight of the real landscape he wants to describe. When will we see such flair again?

And lastly we have the narrow road to the far north transposed to Spain in 'Spanish hill road'. An effortless, elegant mis-match of blues and greens, detail and plain shapes. I think this is where the emotion rises in Ian Cheyne's work, he understand the fact that we see or notice some things less well than we do others. And his combining of cool and warm colours engages the viewer in a way no other British printmaker does. This is diversification at its print-best. I also want to add that no reproduction does a Cheyne colour woodcut justice. They are very memorable and utterly compelling. Thank you Gerbrand. You are now an honorary Scot.

Mary Wrinch (Canadian, 1878 - 1969)

Here is another artist born in the 1870s who began her career as a painter then turned to relief printmaking. Mary Wrinch was born in Essex, England, presumably emigrating to Canada before training at the Central School in Toronto. (She also put in time at the Grosvenor Life School in London and the Art Students League, New York). The painting below dates to this early part of her career. By the late-ish twenties, she had taken up linocut.

She clearly took care to master the technique. Her first compositions were all monochrome and like the one below either landscapes or flower studies, some rather symbolist and undemanding for the date. Not that I would turn this one down. It's a finely balance little piece and more focussed than the hollyhocks from the garden of the governor's house in Quebec.

Not that it was long before the painter in her began to reassert itself. It was at this point she began to make her most individual work. As she said later, 'Colour was all I cared about... I loved contrast'. You can of course see this love of contrast in both prints here. Not for her straightforward blocks of colour. It would have been impossible for her to reproduce the same gradations of colour print by print and this was obviously her intention. It's very reminiscent of the ceramic flower vases of the period with their subtle glazes and shifts of colour. At the same time it is quite flat and finally unconvincing as landscape. In this she is quite similar to her British contemporary Eric Hesketh Hubbard (1892 - 1957). The night piece at the head of the blog is more subtle and painterly than anything he would have attempted. It also notably dispenses with the keyblock. Here is an artist who was not content to stick with a formula.

The moonlit lake is a beautifully judged, simple image and very evocative from my own perspective, on a damp November afternoon in the English Midlands. It's miles way from Essex as well. It's too translucent and forward-looking to be old world. In part it's the fine and careful use of keyblock in her later flower studies that make them look so contemporary. That and the bold and unsentimental use of colour. What she loses in evocativenes, she gains in clarity. I suppose that was where she was heading. Most date from the later thirties and forties. Compare the approach taken to the same flowers taken by her British contemporary Mabel Royds (1874 - 1941) in the early thirties.

Perhaps I'm not being entirely fair to Wrinch here because I think Royds is the better artist. Her tulips are mortal; for all Royd's artistry, we are in the living, dying world with her. Wrinch is coherent but doesn't move that far beyond design.

She did no paintings after the twenties and produced 44 colour linocuts between 1930 and 1944. Unlike her British contemporaries her market clearly held up. No wonder those tulips are so confident! And I can tell you it makes a refreshing change to be able to finally write about a woman artist who is documented and had a long career. Hooray for Canada!