707. The Chairs in The Vale

On 6 June 1894, Charles Ricketts wrote a post card to the Belgian artist Théo van Rysselberghe, who had come to visit The Vale on his trip to London - see blog 181: Théo van Rysselberghe meets Ricketts and Shannon. 

The Vale was not a richly furnished place. Paul Delaney in his 1990 biography stated that there was 'scrubbed wood furniture' and Stephen Calloway (The Journal of The Decorative Arts Society 1890-1940, No. 8, 1984) wrote about the unpretentious parlour that contained 'a pair of simple wooden cottage armchairs of a type costing about five or ten shillings only'.

A chair in the Vale, c.1889

In his 1894 letter, Ricketts wrote that the chairs were 'ordinary high-backed kitchen chairs but unvarnished', the cost being  '6 shillings'. Ricketts and Shannon bought them 'at a little shop at the entrance to The Vale itself [.] The name of the man is Brown'.

By consulting the address book, we can determine who this Brown person could be. The Post Office London Directory for 1895… [Part 2: Street Directory]. London: Kelly & Co. Limited, [1894], p. 464) lists the inhabitants of The Vale Press as part of the listing for King's Road (North Side).

The Post Office London Directory for 1895… [1894], p. 464

Adjacent to the entrance to the small Vale territory are listed two dealers with the name Brown, possibly wife and husband:

Mrs Elizabeth Brown, furniture dealer at 326 King’s Road,
and
Percy Ernst Brown, mail cart manufacturer at number 328

It seems highly likely is that the 'man' P. E. Brown made the chairs which were sold to Ricketts and Shannon by Elizabeth Brown. They could easily carry them home.

706. Hokusai in the Ricketts and Shannon Collection

This guest blog has been written by Mariko Hirabayashi, an independent art historian from Japan, who, in 2023, earned PhD in History of Art. Her 2022 thesis, Charles Ricketts and Japan. British Japonisme of the Second Generation from the 1880s to the 1930s, is a well informed study of the relations between Ricketts and Japan and highlights several new discoveries. Hirabayashi studied Japanese history at the Keio University (Tokyo) and British art history at the University of York. Her current research focuses on British Japonisme, specifically the art interaction and collection between Britain and Japan from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. This blog examines the Ricketts and Shannon collection of Hokusai prints.

Hokusai in the Ricketts and Shannon Collection

Japan ended its national isolation in the mid-nineteenth century, which led to an increase in trade between Britain and Japan. Britain imported various Japanese artefacts, and at the same time, the trend of Japonisme, which brought inspiration to Western artists, came to Britain. In the 1880s, it gradually became easier for people in Britain to acquire Japanese artefacts at auctions and galleries. 

Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon also had an interest in Japanese art. They collected more than 300 Japanese artworks. Their Japanese art collection was bequeathed to the British Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum after their deaths. It includes ukiyo-e (woodblock) prints, drawings, and paintings. The collection contains artefacts by artists from the Edo period, such as Kitagawa Utamaro and Suzuki Harunobu, and it includes many of Katsushika Hokusai's works. Hokusai's artworks account for over 30% of the entire Ricketts and Shannon Japanese art collection. Regarding Hokusai, Ricketts commented that he was one of the greatest artists in the world and that he astonished all European countries (Noguchi, 1916, p. 194). He also stated that as a 'contemporary of Goya and Turner, Hokusai acted not only as an example in his own country but as a stimulus upon the art of Europe' (Ricketts, 1911, p. 29)

Ricketts and Shannon already possessed Japanese artefacts at the end of the 1880s, and they decorated their house, the Vale, with ukiyo-e prints by Hokusai (Ricketts, 1932, p. 33). In the 1890s, they enthusiastically began collecting Japanese art. In 1897, they purchased Hokusai's book, Suikoden at the Captain Francis Brinkley sale, and Ricketts described the acquisition as 'one of the great hauls of our lives' (Charles Shannon's Diary, 18 November 1897; Ricketts, 1939, p. 22). 

Katsushika Hokusai, Preparatory Drawing Album for the 'Ehon Suikoden',
(c.1828) [Collection The British Museum]

Suikoden [Tales of the Water Margin] is a Chinese novel written during the Ming dynasty. It was translated into Japanese, and it became popular in Japan in the nineteenth century. Hokusai produced many illustrations of Suikoden. Hokusai's Suikoden book, which Ricketts and Shannon acquired at Brinkley sale, is currently in the British Museum collection. In the book, 53 drawings are pasted on mounts decorated with gold leaf. Ricketts paid attention to Hokusai's figure depiction in the drawings and believed Hokusai's ability equalled Rembrandt's (Noguchi, 1916, p. 195). At present, compared to Hokusai's ukiyo-e prints, few of his drawings exist because they have been lost or destroyed, for example by fire. Therefore, this Suikoden book in the Ricketts and Shannon collection is an important work in which to observe Hokusai's brushwork.

Katsushika Hokusai, 'Sakyô no dayû Michimasa' from the series of
One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets, Explained by the Nurse (c.1835)
[Collection Fitzwilliam Museum]

In the Ricketts and Shannon Japanese art collection, Sakyô no dayû Michimasa from the series of One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets, Explained by the Nurse, which is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum collection, is another of Hokusai's rare artworks. Sakyô no dayû Michimasa is a preparatory drawing for ukiyo-e prints, and it depicts a Heian Period aristocrat, Fujiwara no Michimasa. Preparatory drawings normally did not survive because they were lost during the printing process. However, One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets, Explained by the Nurse is an incomplete ukiyo-e print series. Therefore, more than 60 preparatory drawings of the series were not used for printing, and they still exist. After the bequest of Sakyô no dayû Michimasa to the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1937, this drawing was forgotten for a long time before it was rediscovered in the 1990s (Morse, 1996, pp. 16, 20-22, 134-135, 215). 

Katsushika Hokusai, 'Kōka Mon’in no Bettō', from the series of
One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets, Explained by the Nurse 
(late 1830s) [Collection The British Museum]

The Ricketts and Shannon collection contains another Hokusai preparatory drawing, Kōka Mon’in no Bettō from the same series as Sakyô no dayû Michimasa. This drawing is currently in the British Museum collection. 

In the 1900s and 1910s, Ricketts and Shannon actively collected Japanese artefacts. In fact, around 1910, there was an increase in opportunities to encounter Japanese artworks, especially ukiyo-e prints at auctions. For example, in a letter to Sydney Cockerell dated 11 August 1913, Ricketts wrote that the number of Japanese artworks in the Ricketts and Shannon collection had almost doubled in 1912. 

Ultimately, Ricketts and Shannon became some of the most notable Japanese art collectors in Britain, their Japanese art collection exceeding 300 works. Considering the contents of their collection, it is notable that most of the Hokusai works are ukiyo-e prints, many of which are iconic. Hokusai created several ukiyo-e print series, the most famous of which is Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (early 1830s), containing 46 different prints. (At first, Hokusai created 36 different prints, as the series title reflects. After the release of Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, this series became very popular, and Hokusai added ten additional prints to the series.) In the Ricketts and Shannon collection, there are 45 different works, including one of the most spectacular prints in this series, The Great Wave. 

Katsushika Hokusai, 'Under the Wave off Kanagawa' from the series of
Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (1831) [Collection The British Museum]

Except for Clear Day with a Southern Breeze, the Ricketts and Shannon collection contains almost all the prints of this series. Moreover, the collection includes all the prints of Hokusai's other ukiyo-e print series: Tour of Waterfalls in Various Provinces; Wondrous Views of Famous Bridges in Various Provinces; and Snow, Flower and Moon (1830s).

Katsushika Hokusai,

'The Waterfall where Yoshitsune Washed his Horse in Yoshino,

Yamato Province' from the series of

Tour of Waterfalls in Various Provinces (c.1833)

[Collection The British Museum]

Specifically, Tour of Waterfalls and Wondrous Views of Famous Bridges are masterpieces of landscape ukiyo-e prints. This way of collecting shows the collectors' intention to complete Hokusai's great ukiyo-e print series. In addition, the contents of their collection align with Ricketts's opinion: 'Turner's faculties of invention were immense, but as a designer of landscape, he was surpassed by Hokusai, his contemporary, who was also a great figure draughtsman' (Ricketts, 1911, p. 5).

Katsushika Hokusai, 'Suspension Bridge on the Border between Hida and Etchū Provinces' 
from the series of Wondrous Views of Famous Bridges in Various Provinces (c.1834)
[Collection The British Museum]

After Ricketts and Shannon passed away, their Hokusai collection, which contained prominent works, was exhibited not only in Britain but also in Japan. In recent years, as part of international touring exhibitions of the British Museum, two exhibitions have been held in Japan: Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave at the Abeno Harukas Art Museum in 2017, and Hokusai from the British Museum at the Suntory Museum of Art in 2022. These two exhibitions showed Kōka Mon’in no Bettō and ukiyo-e prints from the series of Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, Tour of Waterfalls in Various Provinces, and Wondrous Views of Famous Bridges in Various Provinces. 

Ricketts and Shannon's Hokusai collection contains high-quality artefacts, and it has been making an important contribution to Japanese art collecting in Britain for a long time.

                                                                                                  Mariko Hirabayashi

References:

• Peter Morse, Hokusai: Hyakunin-isshu Uba ga Etoki, trans. Takashina Erika. Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, 1996
• Noguchi Yonejiro, Ōshū Bundan Insho-ki. Tokyo, Hakujitsusha, 1916.
• Charles Ricketts, A Century of Art, 1810-1910. London, Carfax and Co., 1911.
• Charles Ricketts, Oscar Wilde: Recollections. London, Nonesuch Press, 1932.
• [Charles Ricketts], Self-Portrait Taken from the Letters & Journals of Charles Ricketts, R.A. Collected and Compiled by T. Sturge Moore. Edited by Cecil Lewis. London, Peter Davies, 1939.
• Charles Shannon's Diary, British Library: Ricketts and Shannon Papers Vol. XXVI, 1898, Add MS 58110.

See also:

Mariko Hirabayashi, Charles Ricketts and Japan. British Japonisme of the Second Generation from the 1880s to the 1930s. PhD Thesis, University of York, 2022. [Online at WhiteRose.]

705. Charles Ricketts, a Design for Salome

Again an auction with a work attributed to Charles Ricketts is announced. A design drawing for a costume of Salome is lot 162 in the Fine Paintings and Frames sale at Parker Fine Arts Auction (Farnham, Surrey) on 6 February. It is a watercolour, 'signed with initials, and inscribed in pencil', 12.75" x 11.25" (32.4 x 28.6cm). 

[Attributed to] Charles Ricketts, design for Salome (undated)

Underneath the image, on the mount, is the attribution:

DESIGN FOR SALOME BY
        CHARLES RICKETTS R.A.
                1866 - 1931

Personally, I can not see a signature, but the handwritten notes in the upper left hand corner could certainly be by Charles Ricketts.

[Attributed to] Charles Ricketts, design for Salome (undated)

If this is indeed a sketch for Oscar Wilde's Salome, then probably one for the first performances in 1906 - the later drawings from 1919 show a considerably different style. 

'Scheme of colours' for [Attributed to] Charles Ricketts, design for Salome (undated)

The 'Scheme of colours', written in the upper left hand corner, does not mention the name or function of the woman depicted. She does not look like Salomé, and because of the vessel in front of her, this may have been intended as a costume design for one of the female servants or enslaved people in the play.

Incidentally, this watercolour contains a second portrait in the top right corner. There, the outline of a woman's head in profile is visible in blue.

[Attributed to] Charles Ricketts, design for Salome (undated) [detail]

704. Charles Shannon's Portrait of a Woman in Highwayman's Garb

At Aubrey's in Guildford, tomorrow, an interesting portrait of a woman will be for sale in the ‘Old Master, British & European’ sale. Lot 9 comprises Charles Shannon's ‘The Lady in a Black Hat – Miss Rachel Castellani’ from 1915. The estimate is £10,000–£15,000. 

Charles Shannon, 'The Lady in a Black Hat - Miss Rachel Castellani' (1915)

The painting has also been described as ‘Lady in a Three-cornered Hat’ or ‘Portrait of a Girl in a Black Hat’. However, the title in the 1916 exhibition catalogue of the Royal Academy gives the name of the sitter.

The Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts 1916 (detail of page 21)

The painting was owned by Ralston Mitchell in the early 1920s, disappearing from sight until a 1988 sale, and, in 1992, was used for the cover of an edition of Virginia Woolf's Orlando. Now, almost forty years later it will change hands again.

The auction house has devoted a web page to the portrait (see Aubrey's blog page):

'The Lady in a Black Hat, Portrait of Miss Rachel Castellani' depicts a woman with androgynous charm, dressed in highwayman’s garb — an attire that was briefly fashionable during the First World War. She sits, arms folded, gazing up at the viewer. Amidst the rich, warm orange and brown hues, vibrant highlights of colour draw the viewer’s attention through her blue gemstone ring and the crimson flowers that creep into the frame. This mysterious painting is one of Shannon’s most accomplished works, distinguishing itself from the rest of his paintings with the sitter’s direct gaze yet informal posture. The painting focuses on the psychological depth of the sitter, creating an intimacy between her and viewer, while also exuding an air of regality and reservedness through her body language and ambiguous expression. The painting reflects his interest in portraying his subjects with a blend of realism and a touch of idealisation.

The artist Augustus John also painted a portrait of the sitter, which he exhibited at the Alpine Club Gallery from November 1917 for three months. His painting, now at the Tate, was simply called 'Portrait of a Girl'. (See Art UK for an image).

Perhaps, Augustus John used her as a model before this painting was exhibited. The Sketch suggested this in the 3 May 1916 issue (discussing Shannon's portrait): 'a former Augustus John sitter, surely?'

The Western Daily Press (29 April 1916) had judged Shannon's portrait as follows: 'an interesting and provocative study of personality, with the dark costume admirably designed on the grey ground'. Truth (10 May 1916) wrote that this painting was 'perhaps the clou of the exhibition' because of its 'simplicity', 'interest' and 'unconsciousness':

A portrait such as this makes you feel that it is easy to paint, although direct evidence to the contrary offers itself here on every side.

The Connoisseur (May-August 1916), however, gave a warning:

Mr. Charles Shannon is another artist who paints portraits in a beautiful convention. His titles betray his guiding principles. Miss Helen Lawson is styled The Lady with a Coral, Miss Hilda Moore, The Lady with the Amethys, and Miss Rachel Castellani, The Lady in the Black Hat.

Herein is a frank warning that we must not regard these pictures as likenesses of individuals so much as arrangements in colour, in which the dominant note is suggested by the object which furnishes the title to each work.

Apart from her name, the identity of the sitter remains obscure... 

(Hammer price was: £9.000.)

703. Barry Humphries ("Dame Edna")'s Collection

Two years ago, in April 2023, Barry Humphries - aka Dame Edna - died. An amateur painter himself, he was an avid collector of art and books, and the work of the 1890s artists Charles Conder (who lived in Australia from 1884 to 1890) is at the core of the collection that will be auctioned by Christie's in London on 13 February 2025. 

The collection not only includes works written, drawn or painted by the usual 1890s suspects like John Gray, Max Beerbohm, Aubrey Beardsley, Marc André Raffalovich, Jan Toorop and, of course, Oscar Wilde, but also by European stars such as Portuguese poet Fernand Pessoa and forgotten artists such as Dutch artist Carel de Nerée tot Babberich, and in between one encounters books by the likes of Mary Shelley, Gustave Doré, Paul Verlaine and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Humphries also owned original drawings by Edward Lear, Edward Burne-Jones, Fernand Khnopff, Duncan Grant and Henri Toulouse de Lautrec.

Charles Ricketts, cover for John Gray,
Silverpoints (Bookplate of Barry Humphries)

The sale includes a deluxe copy (not numbered) of John Gray's Silverpoints, bound in full vellum, designed by Ricketts. Officially there were 25 numbered copies, but at least two unnumbered copies have turned up over the years (possibly more).

The Oscar Wilde section is particularly strong, containing a first state binding of A House of Pomegranates, including two leaves from Wilde's autograph draft for 'The Fisherman and his Soul'; a large-paper copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray (with a letter from Wilde to Ada Leverson), a copy of Poems (1892) - not pristine, but once owned by artist and critic Aymer Vallance - and, of course, signed by Wilde; two dedication copies of the French edition of Salomé; Wilde's autograph draft of seventeen of his epigrams, and several copies of a number of his plays in first edition, notably a presentation copy of The Importance of Being Oscar (one of twelve copies on Japanese vellum, dedicated by Wilde to his publishers Leonard Smithers); and a large-paper edition of The Sphinx of which 25 copies exist in the luxurious binding by Ricketts. 

The collection is complemented by paraphernalia from Barry Humphries's theatrical career, including eyewear and costumes from his persona Dame Edna - a pair of spectacles may amount to £1,000-1,500.

702. Orlando

A new version of 'The Orlando Project' was published online two months ago. Hosted by the University of Alberta (Canada) and published online by the Cambridge University Press, it contains profiles of women writers that have been compiled by the collaboration of literary scholars, digital humanists and computing scientists and allows for 'the serendipities of productive browsing' as well as for 'answering precise, complex questions'. 

Orlando. A Feminist Resource for the History of Women's Writing

The website proudly announces:

This is literary history with a difference. Not a book, though in length the equivalent of more than 80 scholarly books, and not a digital edition of an existing text, it is a richly searchable textbase of born-digital, original writing. It is full of interpretive information on women, literature, and culture, with more than 8 million words of text in documents on the lives and writing of over 1400 authors, together with a great deal of contextual historical material on relevant subjects, such as education, politics, science, the law, and economics.

(See the Alberta pages on The Orlando Project.)

'Orlando. A Feminist Resource for the History of Women's Writing' can be found on the site of Cambridge University Press (see Orlando). A search for Ricketts brings us to articles about Michael Field, Ada Leverson, and other subjects.

Ricketts in 'Orlando. A Feminist Resource for the History of Women's Writing'

Ricketts and Shannon are obviously covered only as an aside in this database, but the writing women they knew, such as Michael Field, are discussed at length.

Michael Field in 'Orlando. A Feminist Resource for the History of Women's Writing'

The database is only partly in open access (such as the queries mentioned above), and is available by annual subscription to libraries, institutions and individuals (prices are not mentioned on the website).

701. A Portrait of the Artist as a Reader

Charles Ricketts was an avid reader who regularly mentioned in his letters which books he was engrossed in or re-reading, as he did in a letter to his old friend the poet and artist Thomas Sturge Moore who received Ricketts's opinion of Marcel Proust:

Do you read Marcel Proust the new idol? I find him curiously interesting & almost intolerable, preoccupied with sex as he is, he gives me the impression of a spinster, there are chance pages of quite admirable analysis of feeling, sensation & emotion & amazing conversations. The Times reviewed his last Vol which is as yet unpublished.

and at the end of the same letter he suggests:

Marie might like Proust better than you since his minute pictures of French ^family life in all phases are singularly vivid, his books it is curious he should have an English vogue.

(Letter dated 18 September 1924: BL Add MS 58086, f 116)

Marie was Marie Appia, of French descendent.

In the early days of The Vale, Ricketts commented instantly on what he was reading. Moore, who  rented a room at Ricketts's home in The Vale, recalled that Ricketts could not enjoy William Morris's poetry:

[...] he came up to my room at the Vale after trying to read the Earthly Paradise and said that it was the kind of poetry to give to boys: that one thanked the lord when a word like 'swared' turned up! for that did remind you that it was poetry

(Letter to Gordon Bottomley, 21 March 1922: BL AA MS 88957/I/68 ff.81-3)

An early drawing exists showing Ricketts reading, and, by chance, the caption indicates which book he is reading: Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater [the title is given as The Confessions of an Opium-Eater]. 

Charles Shannon, Portrait of Charles Ricketts (1890s)
[British Museum: 1946,0209.124:
© The Trustees of the British Museum
Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence]

According to the website of the British Museum it is an undated self-portrait but I would suggest that the graphite drawing was made by Charles Shannon in the early 1890s. Ricketts is depicted whole-length, seated in a chair to front, holding a book. (Museum number 1946,0209.124, donated by Mrs Constance Rea, born Halford).

700. Ricketts and Cézanne

Searching online for undiscovered Ricketts material, I stumbled across an intriguing title a while ago:

'Ricketts and Cézanne', letter by D.S. MacColl, New State[s]man and Nation

The catalogue description by Trinity College library in Cambridge indicates that this undated clipping is in the ‘Papers of Clive Bell', numbered Bell/5/82 [see here for a link to the catalogue description].

We know that Ricketts stopped writing articles for The Burlington Magazine when Roger Fry became editor in 1909, mainly because the latter was a champion of Cézanne and the Post-Impressionists. Who, therefore, would not be interested in an article by a third art critic and Cézanne aficionado, Clive Bell, on this very subject: ‘Ricketts and Cézanne’?

I, at least, was, but I had to find it first! How do you trace an undated article other than by getting the volumes on your desk and flipping through year after year? (As far as I know, there is no digital version of The New Statesman and Nation.)

I finally found it in the 6 January 1940 issue of The New Statesman and Nation. However, I was disappointed. Firstly, because it turned out not to be a long and thorough article, but a short letter to the editor, and, secondly, because neither Ricketts nor Cézanne are mentioned in it. The note is entirely about yet another art critic, D.S. MacColl (1859-1948).

Clive Bell, 'Ricketts and Cézanne', The New Statesman and Nation, 6 January 1940

The letter turns out to be the conclusion of a short series of publications in the magazine, its title taken from the previous episode: a letter from D.S. MacColl published on 30 December 1939.

Clive Bell responded to a single sentence in a nearly sixty-line piece:

Your vivaciously independent Weekly is in no danger of lacking readers, but in matters of visual art is notoriously a tied house, an estimable family party with its poor dependents, a side-chapel tirelessly tintinnabulated by Mr. Bell.

(D.S. MacColl, 'Ricketts and Cézanne', The New Statesman and Nation, 30 December 1939, p. 959)

Although the magazine's editor had already felt compelled to make it clear that it was truly independent of any art-critical coterie, Bell also felt he had to add that his integrity as an art critic should not have been questioned by MacColl, while, in the same vein, vaunting a few more blows, saying for example that it was unfortunate that MacColl was currently guided by only one emotion: rage.

In his article of 30 December 1939, MacColl indeed took a firm line against Raymond Mortimer (1895-1980), an art and literary critic, who on 16 December 1939 had published a review of Ricketts's posthumously published Self-Portrait, which had prompted a first letter from MacColl in the issue of 23 December which was followed by a short answer by Mortimer  which, again, enraged MacColl whose second letter started with these lines:

Sir, - Yes, Ricketts's negative estimate of Cézanne, quoted by Mr Mortimer, is nearer the mark  than the Meier-[G]raefe, Vollard legend, swallowed whole by Roger Fry and his âmes damnées, and epitomised in Mr. Mortimer's words "one of the greatest artists that the world has ever known." 

(By the way, that phrase does not appear in this series of reviews and responses.)

Paul Cézanne, 'La Montagne Sainte-Victoire vue de Bellevue' (c.1885)
[Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia]

In his review (16 December 1939), Mortimer had written:

While he considered Renoir a vulgar sensualist, Cézanne mentally deficient and Matisse an imposter, he delighted in the insipidity of Puvis.

MacColl remarked (on 23 December 1939):

Ricketts as a critic, became only too "Catholic" in his latter days; like all of us, he had his blind spots [...] and his estimate of Cézanne, and of Renoir, for whom on due occasion he had an enthusiastic but discriminating admiration, are more likely to be those of the future than the exaggerated views which Mr. Mortimer has adopted.

Ricketts had denounced Cézanne's art as experimental and, as he argued in Pages on Art (1913):

All these 'experimentalists' are united in one fault; they are over-confident; they forget that the place for the experiment is the studio; it is not an aim but a means.

[See Pages on Art at Internet Archive.]

In his second letter (30 December 1939), MacColl took an anti-Semitic turn, apparently assuming that Ricketts had Jewish roots:

Ricketts was by no manner of means infallible: he did not appreciate, poor devil, the majesty of Handel, and did adore the tinsel of Gustave Moreau. That touches the nadir of his Jewish strain and taste, whose zenith was a passion for all the gems on Aaron's breastplate and their setting.

These are incomprehensible words that say more about that period in our history than about Ricketts, not least because these phrases were not contradicted by other letter writers in The New Statesman and Nation.

[Thanks are due to Jeroen Vandommele for providing an image of the Bell letter.]

699. The Triumph of Beauty

On last week's blog, I received some comments from readers who thought the drawing of a woman from 1890 was reminiscent of Charles Shannon's first print in Oscar Wilde's A House of Pomegranates (1891), a good reason to put them together.

Charles Shannon, silverpoint drawing of a seated woman (1890)
[Collection: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam]

The portrait is executed in silverpoint and shows a seated woman in a wide gown; her left arm outstretched, her right is held in front of her chest. She might be engaged in needlework, but the image is too vague to say.

Charles Shannon, 'The Triumph of Beauty'
in Oscar Wilde, A House of Pomegranates (1891)

The other plate is an image done on papier Gillot, subsequently an etched relief block was made by the firm of Verdoux, Ducourtioux et Huillard in Paris whose monogram VDH appears in the lower left hand corner.

Here we see a woman at her morning toilet. She is surrounded by four figures. Two women hold her long hair outstretched to both sides; one is also holding up a mirror. To the left in the foreground, a woman is kneeling down, as if in prayer, while to her right a seated woman (or man?) is playing the flute. Between them is an animal, probably a cat.

The plate precedes the first story in Oscar Wilde's A House of Pomegranates, illustrating 'The Young King':

The walls were hung with rich tapestries representing the Triumph of Beauty.
(page 7)

The scene on the tapestries is not described in detail and only plays a symbolic role in the story: that of material wealth that will be abandoned by the young king for the wealth of belief in good.

One commenter suggested that the silverpoint drawing was a preliminary study for the print in Wilde's book, but I don't think this could have been the case. A preliminary study in pencil seems more logical to me, but apart from that, the dating - 1890 - is impossibly early. True, by 1890 Wilde had already met with publisher McIlvaine, who had come to London to set up the new firm Osgood McIlvaine & Co, but he had not written all four stories by then and would continue to make many important changes even in July 1891 after receiving the first proofs for the book that was published in November. I think the similarity between the two works should be called coincidental, guided only by Shannon's personal interests.

698. An Unknown Early Drawing by Charles Shannon

The collections of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam have been rapidly digitised over the past decade, and images and descriptions are still being added to the online database. A recent search resulted in some drawings by Shannon unknown to me, the most interesting being the oldest. [See the Shannon results on the website of the Rijksmuseum Collection.] 

Around 1890, Shannon was still experimenting with different media such as pencil or charcoal drawings, watercolour and silverpoint drawings, although he soon settled for lithographs and oil paintings. 

An early silverpoint drawing has turned up in the collection of the Rijksmuseum. It has never before been reproduced.

Charles Shannon, silverpoint drawing of a seated woman (1890)

The drawing on paper (173 by 244 mm) was acquired by the Rijksmuseum in 1949 (object no. RP-T-1949-553); the image is described as: 'Seated woman with gown and arms spread'. 

The image recalls early lithographs such as ‘Biondina’ featuring women in evening wear, but it is rare for Shannon to depict a solitary figure frontally (F.H. Neville, Esq. from 1915 being an  exception). Also unusual is that she is not engaged in an activity, like most of the female figures in the early lithographic portraits or idyllic scenes, although she could be engaged in needlework or a similar activity - the vagueness of the image does not allow us to reach a conclusion. However, only her left arm is outstretched, her right arm is held in front of her chest.

[See next week's blog!] 

697. An Unopened Book for the Reader, Collector, Thief and Publisher

In August 2023, I wrote about the phenomenon of 'unopened' copies of private press books, and expensive commercial books. [See blog 627 about A House of Pomegranates]:

This was the fashion of the untouched book, the book as it came from the bindery to the collector who did not cut open the sections, but left them unopened, untouched and thus unread. It was a kind of tribute to the ideal book, where the object had become more important than the text.

We are talking about books whose quires have been folded but not cut. These may be commercially published works up to roughly about the mid-20th century or they may be private press or other types of deluxe publications.

Meanwhile, I wonder if there could be more cases where a book is not cut open.

The Reader / Collector 

As for the collector's behaviour, I see four possibilities: 

1. The reader cuts open the book while reading it;
2. The reader uses a knife to open several sections, but stops because (s)he abandons the book and stops reading;
3. The collector does not cut open the book, and reads what is visible by looking between the unopened sheets;
4. The collector places the book unread on the shelf to keep it in an 'untouched', 'original' condition.

An uncut copy of Michael Field, The Race of Leaves (Vale Press, 1901)

This creates three versions:

a. A book with all the sections cut open;
b. A partly opened/unopened book;
c. An unopened book.

But the buyer is not the only one who can cause this condition. 

A potential buyer in a bookshop or antiquarian bookshop is unlikely to ask for a knife and start cutting open the sections. In a library, such a thing may happen and then it is the researcher or borrower who turns an unopened book into a (partially) cut open book. In Special Collections Departments (such as that in the National Library of the Netherlands) specific rules try to prevent such behaviour, and the cutting is done (if necessary), after consultation with the curator, by a conservation officer.

The Thief

It may sound unlikely, but after theft, the curious thief may be inclined to cut open the sections of a book. I would like to know of examples of such acts. After all, the thief may be a reader as well.

The Publisher

There may be two situations where the publisher takes care of the persistence of the unopened state: when the publisher places a copy in the publisher's archive and when an unsold stock emerges after the publisher's dissolution. 

Reading an uncut copy of Michael Field, The Race of Leaves
(Vale Press, 1901)

There may thus exist both archival copies and unsold stock in uncut form. The former does not actually occur with Ricketts and the Vale Press books. The sample copies from the shop, At the Sign of the Dial, were, to my knowledge, all cut open to show the reader all the pages. This does not apply, incidentally, to the copies printed on vellum. The sections of these copies were cut or  trimmed only in the bindery.

But after Ricketts and Shannon passed away, it turned out that several issues of their magazine The Dial had not sold out. There was quite a pile of unsold and unopened copies in their original wrappers, almost a hundred in total. There were ten copies of the third issue (1893), seven copies of number four (1896), and no less than eighty-three copies of the last issue - see Catalogue of Valuable Books and Manuscripts […] Valuable Books on the Fine Arts from the Collection of C.H. Shannon, Esq., R.A. and the late Charles Ricketts, Esq., R.A. […] London, Christie, Manson & Woods, December 4, 1933, p. 49, no. 403. 

Unopened copies of the fifth number of The Dial may be less rare than copies that have actually been read without struggling to hold open the pages and look between them to read the text.

696. Silly Mistakes or Peculiar Errors (2)

Sometimes academic publications make you wonder: where do researchers get their information from? 

Inadequate research results in silly mistakes or peculiar errors. I quote last week's words (although not literally) and also promise to let this kind of oddities pass for the time being as they seem to be becoming commonplace.

The American Printing History Association's respectable journal Printing History published an article that puzzled me, not so much with its content and argumentation, but because of curious misspellings and attributions, which could and should have caught the editor's eye.

The young and promising scholar Jacob Romm wrote the essay 'The Marriage of Two Arts: Michael Field, Vale Press, and Queer Print in Victorian England' (Printing History, 35, Summer 2024, pages 48-63).

These two subjects, the Vale Press by Charles Ricketts, and the poems and plays by Michael Field, Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper, are always worth paying attention to. 

Biography of Michael Field (detail) on Yellow Nineties 2.0

And here, unfortunately, we see two recurring errors. Bradley's name is consistently misspelled, not with an ‘a’ (Katharine) but as Katherine, which was not her name, even though half the Internet pretends it is, while there are accurate sources online to cite, such as The Yellow Nineties.  

The second false assumption that consistently reverberates throughout this article is that Ricketts and Shannon jointly ran the Vale Press, by which, incidentally, is meant not the early period of Vale Publications but rather the later publishing firm Hacon & Ricketts. Shannon was active as a co-publisher from 1889 until about 1895, but right from the start of the real publishing company, funded by Hacon and Ricketts, he concentrated on his painting career and kept away from the publishing programme.

The oversights are related to the desired assumption that Ricketts and Shannon were a homosexual couple all their lives, whereas it is clear from diaries (especially as pages have been torn out) and later letters that Shannon maintained a series of mistresses from the late 1890s  with whom he considered marriage several times - and Ricketts was alone in the relationship as a gay man.

Their cohabitation was enigmatic to the outside world, centred on the art collection, and their household could well be called ‘queer’, but they each operated separately. The only constant in their collaboration was the focus on their art collection.

There are smaller misses, such as the claim that Ricketts designed three ‘uncial-inspired’ types - in fact, there was only one, the other two were inspired by Jenson's Renaissance type.

The essay mentions that the Vale Press issued works by 'Shakespeare, Marlowe, Oscar Wilde, and Gordon Bottomley'. Works by Wilde and Bottomley were designed by Ricketts, but were never issued by Hacon and Ricketts (or issued as Vale Press publications). It is even said that after the closure of the Vale Press Ricketts and Shannon occasionally designed books for friends: Ricketts did so frequently, but Shannon never designed any books after the death of Oscar Wilde in 1900.

A quote from The Times from 1931 stating that Ricketts and Shannon 'shared the same studio' goes uncorrected, while each had his own studio, even in their early days at the Vale Shannon had a private studio.

Ricketts and Shannon are called the 'printers' of the Vale Press books, which they never were, as they did not possess a printing press.

Thomas Campion, Fifty Songs (1896)

It is clear from small details that the Vale Press books, even those illustrated in the article, have not been studied. Thomas Campion's Fifty Sonnets are said to be poems 'about the sea', which they are not.

The decorative paper of the cover of Fifty Sonnets is described as 'green paper patterned with gold ships', while the design is printed in blue on white paper - no gold has been used. Has the author actually handled a copy of this book?

The interpretation of the border design for the first text page of Fair Rosamund is debatable: the author assumes Ricketts showed a drawing of it to Michael Field. He did not. He only imagined that drawing of Pylades as a decadent naked dancer, as he also said in a discussion of the play. But Michael Field's opinion made that ‘vision’ dissipate and instead came the figure of Fortuna. (Incidentally, Romm calls this page a frontispiece, which is factually incorrect).

As a reader, so many inaccuracies can make you despair, especially when one encounters a characterisation of The Yellow Book as ‘Wilde's Yellow Book’, when obviously Wilde had nothing whatsoever to do with it. However, most of all, I feel sorry for the author who is so poorly supervised by an editor of a leading magazine. 

Is it perhaps advisable to stop this - clearly pointless - blog, say, on reaching blog post number 700? One might wonder.

695. Silly Mistakes or Peculiar Errors (1)

Sometimes serious publications make you wonder: where do collectors get their information from?

Inadequate research results in silly mistakes or peculiar errors.

I recently came across the three-volume catalogue of a huge Rubáiyát collection of over 7000 editions: Edward Fitzgerald's Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and Related Materials. The John Roger Paas Collection (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2023). The Vale Press edition of Fitzgerald's poems is included as number 4262 (Text, part II, pages 542-543).

The description begins with an introduction about the publisher:

Charles Ricketts (1866-1931) was known in his lifetime as an illustrator, book designer, typographer, and theatrical designer. Although also a painter, his strength was in wood engraving, and after working as a commercial artist he and his lifelong companion, Charles Shannon, set up a small press in Chelsea (London), where Ricketts exercised complete control over all aspects of production. Gaining the financial backing of William Llewellyn Hacon, in 1896 Ricketts and Shannon established The Vale Press, which soon gained a reputation as one of the leading private presses at the time. Following a devastating fire at the printer's in 1904, which destroyed all of Ricketts's woodblocks, the partners decided to close the firm.

Halfway through the second line, the text begins to derail: Ricketts and Shannon did not 'set up a small press in Chelsea'. Although they lived in Chelsea, at The Vale, and used this name in their publications, the press at their home was Shannon's lithographic press, not a typographic press. The texts for their art portfolios, books and their magazine The Dial were printed elsewhere, and since 1890 they preferred to have them printed at the Ballantyne Press in Tavistock Street (Covent Garden).

Although the first books appeared in 1896, the firm was founded two years earlier, in 1894.  Ricketts and Shannon did not establish The Vale Press. Officially the publishing firm was called Hacon & Ricketts, while the papers were signed by Ricketts and Hacon. 

Publisher's mark in Milton's Early Poems (1896)

Milton's Early Poems, the first book printed at the 'private press' (a definition they did not use), was decorated with a publisher's mark that included the first letters of the names Ricketts and Hacon, while earlier they had used one that included the initials 'R' and 'S' (see the colophon of Hero and Leander, 1894). Although it has been said that Shannon was involved in the design of the frontispiece of the Milton edition, it is impossible to say what his contribution consisted of, if any.

Publisher's mark in Hero and Leander (1894)

The last line of the introduction consists only of false claims:

Following a devastating fire at the printer's in 1904, which destroyed all of Ricketts's woodblocks, the partners decided to close the firm.

The fire was in December 1899, it destroyed a part of his blocks (mostly those for a planned 39-volume Shakespeare edition), and it was Ricketts's decision to close The Vale Press, which happened in 1903, after which he privately published the press's bibliography.

From these errors in a 113-word introduction, we can infer that no major study on The Vale Press was consulted, the words must have been cobbled together on the Internet without fact-checking.