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Art Review A Survey of British Art In All Its Branches 1937   1937    Page: 41
 
 Prints and Drawings in 1937
Profiles: click on name to see profile
 
Flint, William Russell [1880-1969. UK. Painter/Illustrator]
Raverat, Gwendolen (Gwen) Mary [1885-1957. UK. Illustrator/Wood Engraver/Painter]
Footnotes:
Sickle Sharpening, Anjou Drypoint by W. Russell Flint, R.A., P.R.W.S.

Exhibited at the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers Autumn Wood-engraving by Gwendolen Raverat, R.E. Exhibited at the Society of Wood-Engravers
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Prints and Drawings in 1937

by Douglas Percy Bliss

EVERYONE who has read the elder Pliny’s chapters on Art will remember how often what he says is applicable to modern conditions. This for example:’ But at Rome the works of art are legion. Besides one effaces another from the memory, and, moreover, beautiful as they are, people are distracted by the overpowering claims of duty and business; for to admire Art we need leisure and profound stillness.’ I often think of these words when I have to visit Bond Street, and I thought of them today when I began to sort out my notes of exhibitions visited for the purpose of writing this survey.

Let me confess at once that I have had distractions and have lacked leisure and profound stillness. What I can say here of the acreage of prints and drawings I have seen this past twelvemonth must of necessity be hasty and full of omissions. But without further apology let me begin by glancing at the Painter- Etchers. Every show of this Society is very like every other. Even the titles hardly seem to change. This year the show was as good as usual, full of prints of sterling craftsmanship. It is such a very worthy show that like other worthy things it becomes a bore. Brockhurst was unrepresented this year. Griggs sent only one print; but this, Cockayne (illustrated), is one of his finest medieval inventions. Robert Austin showed several lovely line-engravings. Austin is not only a consummate craftsman but he designs with great refinement. He had two prints here, Young
Art Review A Survey of British Art In All Its Branches 1937   1937    Page: 42
 
 Prints and Drawings in 1937
Profiles: click on name to see profile
 
Osborne, Malcolm [1880-1963. UK. Painter/Poster Designer/Etcher/Engraver]
White, Archibald Arthur (Archie) [1899-1957. UK. Painter/Wood Engraver/Illustrator]
Footnotes:
Charles J. Vint, Esq. Drypoint by Malcolm Osborne, R.A., R.E. Exhibited at the Royal Society of Painter - Etchers and Engravers

Leeds Castle, Kent Wood-engraving by Archie White By courtesy of John Player & Sons, Ltd.
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Mother (illustrated) and Belfry Steps, of which I can only say (and I mean it as a high compliment) that they reminded me of the Pre-Raphaelite drawings in the Moxon Tennyson. They revealed the same intense devotion to material things, yet were steeped in poetry. Stanley Anderson and Stephen Gooden are two other line-engravers equally gifted technically, but to them the touch of poetry is rarely granted.

Gooden, one of the new A.R.A’s, had an Aisopic subject, Wolf and Kid (illustrated), of great ornamental beauty. J. T. Arms showed etchings so delicately needled that they required examination with a glass if the lines were to be seen as such. Gordon Warlow also needles so minutely that he achieves undesirable half-tone effects. Russell Flint’s Sickle Sharpening, Anjou, was a characteristic drypoint. Malcolm Osborne’s portrait of Charles J. Vint, Esq. was another notable print. Both of these we reproduce. John Farleigh, a new A.R.E., was much in evidence, and C. F. Tunnicliffe, Gwen Raverat and C. W. Taylor were all strongly represented.

Gwen Raverat was also prominent at the show of the Society of Wood-Engravers at the Redfern Gallery. Her engravings of The Seasons were wholly charming. Mrs. Raverat made her name just after the war, and, while so many artists experimented with the woodblock, usually abandoning it after a few years, she has stuck to the job and gone from strength to strength. I very much liked John O’Connor’s engravings, Farm Cart (opposite), and Adventure. Godfrey Simpson’s Kensington Square and Eric King’s The Cart Track were other excellent prints. On the whole, however, there were far too many book-illustrations. Not that these were unworthy, quite the contrary; but out of place. The right place for a bookillustration is in a book.

At Walker’s the Society of Graver- Printers in Colour held its annual show. The most remarkable print was Urushibara’s translation by means of twenty or more blocks of a Brangwyn water-colour, Golden Morning, Venice (illustrated). The Brangwyn-Urushibara print was included as a compliment to its transcendent qualities. All the other prints were of course engraved by their designers. English wood-block colour prints differ, too, from their Japanese exemplars in the absence of line as a vital factor in design. John Platt, for example, most studious and skilful of all English woodcut artists, has entirely abandoned line in his more recent prints, composing by masses of delicately balanced and gradated tone. Lapwings, exhibited here and at the New English (and shown on page 45), is a good example of his recent work. I noted, too, with pleasure prints by Eric Slater, Ian Cheyne, Meryl Watts and
Art Review A Survey of British Art In All Its Branches 1937   1937    Page: 43
 
 Prints and Drawings in 1937
Profiles: click on name to see profile
 
O’Connor, John Scorror [1913-2004. UK. Painter]
Seaby, Allen William [1867-1953. UK. Woodcut Artist/Illustrator/Painter]
Footnotes:
Porlock Church Colour Woodcut by Professor Allen W. Seaby Exhibited at the Society of Graver-Printers in Colour

Farm Cart Wood-engraving by John S. O’Connor Exhibited at the Society of Wood-Engravers
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Rigden Read. In the latter’s Spider’s Web the lines of the web were impressed into the paper, yielding an interesting quality. Allen Seaby’s Porlock Church (illustrated) with its glowing sky and dramatic accents of dark was another memorable print.

The black and white gallery at the Royal Academy is always an excellent show, but what has been said of the Painter-Etchers show applies equally to it. Here were lots of highly respectable performances, but hardly anything novel, intense or spontaneous. Ernest Jackson’s chalk Study for a Portrait was a solid and complete drawing. Leon Underwood’s pen and wash head, Wendy, was equally satisfying, though it left much more unsaid. That learned architect, Sir Reginald Blomfield, showed a charming pencil drawing. There were several admirable drawings by the late Charles Shannon, R.A. J. W. Tucker’s pencil Warkworth Castle had solid merits. C. F. Tunnicliffe showed an ambitious wood-engraving, Chinese Geese (illustrated). The three leading lineengravers aforementioned, Anderson, Austin and Gooden, were all excellently represented. Austin’s Girl on the Stairs was particularly fine. That grand old man of British engraving, Sir Frank Short, has rarely shown better things. Sir Muirhead Bone was disappointing, but Francis Dodd, Ian Strang and Henry Rushbury all sent worthy examples to this year’s show. I liked Louise Van den Bergh’s drypoint, Sous Bois (illustrated). It was a slight and delicate thing, easy to overlook; but it contained passages of very sensitive drawing.

And now to turn to one-man or small group shows containing drawings and prints. In October the Tate Gallery honoured the late Professor Tonks (in what proved to be the last months of his life) by giving him a retrospective show. One room was devoted to drawings. Tonks, who was purposeful and looked grim, could be sentimental and humorous, as these drawings showed. They were both grave and gay, but chiefly gay and always scholarly and sensitive. The London Gallery show of Munch, the Norwegian master, included many extraordinarily expressive prints and drawings. The art of Munch is tragic in temper, harsh, masculine, ruthless, almost outrageous in its insistence upon the sinister, the joyless and the ugly in life. Everything is shed that might impede the swiftness of its convulsive rhythms. He draws people distorted by terror in landscapes which swell over their heads like waves to overwhelm them. He makes line search for and attain the emotional effects of music—the loudest, most clangorous music. He sacrifices everything tender and delectable to the expression of one prevailing mood, and presents this so smashingly that almost we recoil before the onslaught. This was in October and concurrent with two interesting shows at Colnaghi’s. One of these was of drawings by Catharine Dodgson (Mrs. Campbell Dodgson), very pretty things in the manner now of Tiepolo, now of French rococo drawings. The other was of Italian etching of the
Art Review A Survey of British Art In All Its Branches 1937   1937    Page: 44
 
 Prints and Drawings in 1937
Profiles: click on name to see profile
 
Bell, Vanessa [1879-1961. UK. Interior/Textile Designer/Painter]
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Oil painting, size 16" X 12" By Vanessa Bell

THE QUAYSIDE
Exhibited at the Lefevre Galleries
Art Review A Survey of British Art In All Its Branches 1937   1937    Page: 45
 
 Prints and Drawings in 1937
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Platt, John Gerald [1892-1976. UK. Painter/Stained Glass/Poster Designer/Wood Engraver]
Reckitt, Rachel [1908-1995. UK. Painter/Sculptor/Wood Engraver]
Footnotes:
Lapwings Colour Woodcut by John Platt Exhibited at the New English Art Club and the Society of Graver Printers in Colour

Dittisham Wood-engraving by Rachel Reckitt Exhibited at the National Society
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17th and 18th centuries, by men like G. B. Castiglione, Tiepolo and Piranesi. There were unusually fine impressions of the Carceri series of Piranesi, amazing achievements, in their total imaginative effect quite appalling—so fierce were they in line, so gloomy in tone, so recklessly grandiloquent in utterance. For sheer reach and power of invention it is inconceivable that anyone will ever go beyond the creator of the Carceri.

At the Little Burlington Galleries was a collection of drawings by an old sailor, Nicholas Cavanagh. This was no mere 1 stunt’ show. Cavanagh draws ships really well. With his sailor’s knowledge of ships and the sharpest of visual memories he can picture windjammers that sailed their last thirty years ago. Another thing that interested me in the old salt’s drawings was the frequent use of white lines amid dark passages of shading. These lines were not superimposed by painting or scratching. They were actually made before the shading was done, by impressing the paper with a fine, blunt point. You can imagine what craftsmanship, what deliberation and forethought such a method requires.

Very different is Briscoe’s work, which Colnaghi’s showed in January. Briscoe is an impressionist, painting with the etching needle. He has admirable qualities, rugged truth, knowledge, high sincerity. He draws with great vigour and freedom; but too often his prints have the confused silhouette and ugly and meaningless foreshortenings of a snapshot.

In February Wildenstein’s put on a show of drawings by Augustus John that was one of the ‘events’ of the month. John has found another magnificent girl model and draws her with incomparable spirit and assurance. What a draughtsman! Standing in this show I asked myself why on earth we talk with bated breath about the drawings of Picasso and Matisse when John draws so very much better. John’s line has a superb, almost insolent, ease, yet it misses nothing of the character of the model.

There were also superb John drawings in the Hugh Blaker collection, shown at the Leicester Galleries in March. The late Hugh Blaker bought what he liked, whether it was by Lord Leighton or Sickert, Picasso or Charles Keene, and it was interesting to see how little these excellent drawings seemed to fight each other as they hung side by side. In the Leicester Galleries show of six living Frenchmen were several remarkable Segonzac drawings. Not long ago one could hardly visit a show without seeing one of Segonzac’s sprawling nudes, the colour of pale pork and with a suety incrustation of paint. I have always cordially disliked them. But just how brilliantly Segonzac can draw the nude was seen in an
Art Review A Survey of British Art In All Its Branches 1937   1937    Page: 46
 
 Prints and Drawings in 1937
Profiles: click on name to see profile
 
Austin, Robert Sargent [1895-1973. UK. Poster Designer/Painter/Etcher/Engraver]
Griggs, Frederick Landseer (F.L.) [1876-1938. UK. Etcher/Illustrator/Architect]
Footnotes:
Rodney Burn, who showed drawings at the Beaux Cockayne Etching by F. L. Griggs, R.A., R.E. Exhibited at the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers and the Royal Academy (By courtesy of P. & D. Colnaghi & Co.)

Young Mother Line engraving by Robert S. Austin, R.E., R.W.S. Exhibited at the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers and the Royal Academy
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example at this show. Nothing clogged and suety there. It was a thing of tremendous spirit, of a fiery, darting directness. There was nothing in it, only a few lines and a rub or two of tone; but everything seemed to be said, and the effect of luminosity was remarkable.

In March Zwemmer’s put on a Modigliani show which was an object lesson in how to mount and frame and generally present a show of drawings. Some of Modigliani’s drawings are so delicate in line, so pale and ghostly, that they will hardly ' read’ at all. But Zwemmer’s brought all their skill and experience to bear upon the problem. Using mounts of various materials and pale pastel blues, yellows and pinks, they pulled faded drawings into prominence. I particularly admired the use of thin bands of stronger colour along the cut-edges of the mounts. As for the drawings themselves, I lack words to describe their tenderness, grace and sophistication, their sheer linear refinement. Modigliani was as facile as he was sensitive. He obviously enjoyed making lovely rhythms with his pencil irrespective of what they signified. Sometimes he drew from the model, sometimes ‘out of his head,’ sometimes he combined what he saw with what he knew; but always his line was informed with matchless taste and refinement.

At the Adams Gallery in the same month were Rodin drawings. Rodin, of course, liked to pose his models in all sorts of fantastic and untenable positions. Then he drew with lightning speed, scampering voluptuously over the paper, and then flinging down a wash of colour as delicate as the bloom on the skin of a peach. He must have thoroughly enjoyed himself in these feats of skill. Sometimes the colour-wash seemed to be parallel to rather than confined within the contours, and the result gave a fascinating suggestion of light and movement to the figure.
In March Anthony Devas had the two rooms of the magnificent Wildenstein Galleries in Bond Street. In one of these he showed twenty-five drawings of which it may be said that they had a poetic flavour. They were always about to ‘come off’ but never quite did. Devas is taking to the last stages of drawing—the inspired scribble of a Rembrandt, a Fragonard or a John—without having undergone the arduous years of apprenticeship. There was some felicity and more promise about these drawings, but they were not convinced nor convincing.

Devas puts down four lines and scratches out two.
Art Review A Survey of British Art In All Its Branches 1937   1937    Page: 47
 
 Prints and Drawings in 1937
Profiles: click on name to see profile
 
Altson, Louise VandenBergh [1910-2010. Belgium/UK/USA. Painter]
Gooden, Stephen Frederick [1892-1955. UK. Engraver/Illustrator/Etcher]
Footnotes:
Sous Bois Drypoint by Louise Van den Bergh Exhibited at the Royal Academy

Wolf and Kid: Illustration for Aesop's ' Fables ' Line engraving by Stephen Gooden, A.R.A., R.E. Exhibited at the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers
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Arts Gallery, was one of the most promising of all Slade students after the war; but for some reason or other he has not yet found himself. He too scratches out half he puts in. Indeed he seems rather to pride himself in roundabout methods, as though ‘quality’ depended upon making the paper a sort of battlefield and effort were synonymous with sincerity.

At the Coronation exhibition of the Royal Society of British Artists there were many excellent drawings. This show being of a retrospective nature, there were drawings by Millais, Holman Hunt and other eminent Victorians. The Millais drawings were particularly lovely. Bouverie Hoyton showed large landscape drawings in line and wash, and I liked Russell Reeve’s vigorous and amusing interior of a movie studio.

At the New English Art Club I can recollect nothing of much interest in black and white except Norman Janes’s Place d’Armes, Calais, in ink and wash, and B. Moray Williams’s wood-engraving, The Lacemaker. At the National Society I have record only of Rachel Reckitt’s wood-engraving, Dittisham (here illustrated). At the Fine Art Society, Alfred Thornton showed warm, vigorous, broadly generalized landscapes in line and wash. At their show at the Lefèvre Galleries both Jan and Cora Gordon included drawings. Cora Gordon’s were exciting in their witty economy of line. Karin Leyden exhibited drawings at the Leicester Galleries. In a brilliant appreciation Aldous Huxley described her figures as ‘complicated solids suspended in the void of the paper.’ At the same time and place twenty-one ‘Chelsea Draughtsmen’ were exhibiting. I noted with surprise in an introduction by one of them that the mentors of the group include not only Raphael, Dürer and Ingres, but ‘Protogenes and Apelles ’! It was the first time that I had heard of the survival of drawings by these almost mythical Greeks. But the big mistake of the Chelsea Draughtsmen was to include in their show drawings by Augustus John which made all others look diagrammatic and undistinguished.

At the Foyle Art Gallery Eggert Gudmundsson, an Icelandic artist, showed paintings and drawings characterized by breadth and squareness of style. The portrait-drawings in their starkness, their harsh, wiry lines, their emphasis on human character, and their complete innocence of technical finesse, gave an
Art Review A Survey of British Art In All Its Branches 1937   1937    Page: 48
 
 Prints and Drawings in 1937
Profiles: click on name to see profile
 
Brangwyn, Frank [1867-1956. UK. Furniture/Textile/Poster Designer/Illustrator/Painter]
Tunnicliffe, Charles Frederick [1901-1979. UK. Painter/Illustrator]
Urushibara, Yoshijiro [1888-1953. Japan. Printmaker/Painter/Woodcut Artist]
Footnotes:
Chinese Geese Wood-engraving by C. F. Tunnicliffe, R.E. Exhibited at the Royal Academy

Golden Morning, Venice Colour Woodcut by Y. Urushibara, after Frank Brangwyn, R.A. Exhibited at the Society of Graver-Printers in Colour
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impression of high sincerity. Gudmundsson’s models were weather-beaten old men and women, and he presented them with more than adequate ruggedness and vitality, simply hewing out his planes as though with an axe.

John Skeaping showed drawings at Tooth’s early in the New Year. These were immensely skilful and polished performances, chiefly scenes of the circus. They struck me as being technical tours de force, frigid affairs, in style somewhere between the linear acrobatics of Picasso line-drawings and Barnett Freedman book-jackets.

Every whit as highly polished were the prints and drawings of Mariette Lydis, shown at Colnaghi’s. Madame Lydis is marvellously accomplished. Her young girls with soulless, feline eyes are miracles of delicate modelling. But always this charming lady dwells on the spiritually ugly in life. She cannot even illustrate The Beggar's Opera without turning its coarse and reckless gaiety into sinister and lecherous elegance.

There were scores of delightful drawings by Bonington to be studied at the remarkable exhibition of his art at the Burlington Fine Arts Club. Bonington could not put a line wrong. He was, as is well known, only twenty-six when he died; but his influence was more widespread and immediate, if less profound, than that of Constable. This exhibition by a wealth of drawings and paintings by French and English contemporaries illustrated most clearly the vogue of that amazing youth. There was a drawing in sepia by Victor Hugo, ‘Gothick’ and gloomy, a glorious romantic sketch by the author of ‘Notre Dame de Paris.’

Two galleries of the Print Room at South Kensington were given over to a show of Hungarian Graphic Art. It was arranged by that gifted Hungarian etcher, Julius Komjati, who, by the way, learnt the craft under Sir Frank Short. The prints as a whole were immensely lively. They had the virtues of directness and spontaneity, and emotional intensity withal. These Hungarian draughtsmen seem to revel in thunderous apocalyptic scenes or in the horrors of Walpurgis Nacht. The show, which was of the greatest interest, opened in May.

The London Gallery showed the originals of cartoons and portrait-drawings by David Low. Low is a man for whose existence we must be truly thankful. When crisis follows crisis till even the steadiest of us begin to feel panicky, Low’s cartoon appears to keep us sane. Time and again his comment is the wise and witty comment we should all like to have made. And how brilliantly he draws! Using a brush, he makes it perform feats of expressive calligraphy that are Japanese. I looked a long time at a wax model of Low’s hands that was on view. It would be interesting to know if models exist of the hands of other great cartoonists, of Gillray, the headlong and outrageous, of the colossal Daumier, or the stiff and pukka-sahibish, but very human, Tenniel.