726. Drawings for Unrecorded Histories (1)

Several sketches have been preserved for the cover of the short story collection Unrecorded Histories (which would be published two years after Charles Ricketts had died), but of the six illustrations, only rudimentary sketches remain—and not even for all of them. The one on page 106 with an elephant, a servant with a fan and a naked female figure has no preliminary study that we know of. [See the remaining sketches in the collection of the British Museum].

Charles Ricketts, sheet with several sketches for book covers and illustrations
[Collection British Museum: 1946,0209.122]
[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license]
[© With permission of the executors of the Charles Ricketts estate,
Leonie Sturge-Moore and the heirs of Charmain O'Neil]

The five sketches – the final drawings appear to have been lost – are on a sheet with other sketches for book covers, one of which must be much older: a sketch (left row, second from top) is for the collected works of W.B. Yeats, which were published from 1922 onwards. From a letter to the poet Gordon Bottomley, we know that Ricketts worked on the illustrations for his stories in December 1930:

I have also designed silhouette illustrations to 5 short tales or dialogues by J P Raymond, which I hope to engrave & publish later. 

(Letter from Charles Ricketts to Gordon Bottomley, 26 December 1930: BL Add MS 88957/1/76, f 132)

The five sketches (a sixth appears to have been erased) are approximately 7 cm in height, while the book illustrations, including the frames, measure 15 cm. Ricketts's original scheme for making wood-engravings differs greatly from the final silhouette drawings printed in terracotta.

Charles Ricketts, two sketches for Unrecorded Histories
[Collection British Museum: 1946,0209.122]
[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license]
[© With permission of the executors of the Charles Ricketts estate,
Leonie Sturge-Moore and the heirs of Charmain O'Neil]

The two drawings at the top right are sketches for the illustrations on page 44 (left) and page 10 (right). The latter is the first illustration in the book accompanying the story “The Transit of the Gods”. The first story takes place in Rome in the late 1920s, where Greek gods gather in a private room at Bar Gréco (the Antico Caffè Greco): Hermes and Apollo arrive first, followed by Aphrodite and Zeus. Given the stifling atmosphere, they move to the café's small courtyard where they sit among orange trees in boxes and 'an unhappy palm', which figures in the illustration.

Charles Ricketts, 'The Transit of the Gods'

Aphrodite is standing to the left of the tree, Zeus on the right behind a smoking Apollo and Hermes, who is perched on a small table and also holds a cigarette. After the café closes, Hermes leaves them, and they retire to Apollo's house where his help Hyacinthus announces the unexpected arrival of 'a Jewish deity'. However, his name is not Christ or God, but  Mephistopheles:

I will not detain you on my share in the creation of the world; to a rudimentary vegetation I have added choicer flowers, richer fruit. I invented pleasure instead of lust, the arts instead of morals; but these are details.

His proposal entails that monotheism must come to an end - 'these are the days of adventure and change'. Like Beyond the Threshold, this story gives Ricketts the opportunity to reflect on love, art, beauty and the times in which he lived.

725. The Great Wave off Kanagawa

The auction catalogue Japanese Prints. Art of the Woodblock (Dreweats, 8 July 2025) contains a famous print by Katsushika Hokusai, 'Under the Wave of Kanagawa', also known as 'The Great Wave'. This particular copy comes from the collection of Thomas Sturge Moore. 

Katsushika Hokusai, 'Under the Wave of Kanagawa' (provenance: T.S. Moore)

In February of this year, Mariko Hirabayashi, published her blog about Hokusai in the collection of Ricketts and Shannon (see blog No. 706), including an image of the same print from their collection which is now in the British Museum.

Japanese Prints. Art of the Woodblock (Dreweats, 8 July 2025)

This copy of the print is 'The Property of an English Family', the provenance being: 'Thomas Sturge Moore (1870-1944); thence by descent'. It is curious to see that such a treasure once belonged to artists such as Ricketts, Shannon and Moore, who, in their early days, were keen but poor collectors. The current value is estimated a grand £80,000-£120,000.

Japanese Prints. Art of the Woodblock (Dreweats, 8 July 2025)

Note

Jan Piggott kindly provided the information that another print from the collection of T.S. Moore had been reproduced as early as 1898 in C.J. Holmes's book on Hokusai (At the Sign of  the Unicorn): 'Storm at the Foot of Fuji' (plate XI). A print of waves and yellow ships opposite Kanagawa (plate XII) came from the collection of C.H. Shannon; the book also contains four plates after original drawings from his collection. Holmes himself collected Japanese prints  (three of which were reproduced in his book).

724. A Male Nude by C.H. Shannon

Bonhams in London, in an auction of British and European Art (19 June 2025), offers two drawings by Charles Shannon in a rather carelessly described lot (see lot 8). 

Study for The Capture; Male nude study
two, one signed with initials and dated 'C S 1927' (in pencil, lower left), and inscribed 'The Capture' (in pencil, lower right); the other signed with initials (lower left)
one watercolour and pencil, the other black and white chalks
the largest 34 x 38 cm (13 3/8 x 14 15/16in). (2)
unframed

Study by Edward Joseph Paynter
British and European Art, Bonhams, 19 June 2025

The illustrations indeed show two drawings by Shannon, but also the backside of three chalk drawings by an artist whose name is not mentioned in the description, but can be identified as Edward Joseph Paynter (1870-1945). Their value is apparently considered to be minimal.

Shannon's 'Male nude study' is in black and white chalk on blue prepared paper.

Charles Shannon, Male nude study
British and European Art, Bonhams, 19 June 2025

This study depicts a naked man seen from behind. His right arm is stretched upwards as if he is reaching for something. It could be a preliminary study for the nude figure in his 1921-22 painting 'The Golden Age'. There was also a 1907 version, which was called 'an ambitious idyll with nudes and half-draped figures under trees'. (Both paintings: whereabouts unknown.)

Charles Shannon, 'The Golden Age' (1921-22)

To the right of the centre, there is a man standing in roughly the same position. After swimming, he reaches for a towel or a piece of clothing hanging over a tree branch.

723. Charles Ricketts and The Vasari Society (7)

Raphael is one of those artists whom Charles Ricketts attempted to portray in a nuanced manner in his study The Prado and Its Masterpieces (1904), partly because of the difficulty of attributing certain works to him, given that he employed such a large number of assistants. 

Other pictures which left Raphael's studio as his work are really his, though the work of the assistant and the restorer may have intervened. [...] I would advocate a more guarded way of specifying the importance of an assistant in a picture than is now prevalent.
If the design of a work (the structural element of its visible presence) belongs to the master, behind it we notice his intellectual bent, and are able to estimate the creative force which was his. The modern tendency is to recognise, if possible, evidence of an assistant's hand, find his name, and so to dismiss the work forthwith as by the master 'only in part'. This is misleading. 

(p. 104)

Ricketts described some paintings in detail, such as 'The Holy Family with the Lamb': 

[...] like most of the smaller pictures belonging to Raphael's Tuscan period, it is more mature than his more important early works, in which the elements influencing him occur in a state of perplexing fusion [...] It is free from repainting, if a little over-cleaned.

(p. 105-106)

He referred to it as

[...] a delightful idyll which curiously reveals the temper of the Renaissance; the Virgin is represented as a bland yet charming woman, the Holy Child is playing with the lamb, the symbol of his sacrifice, whilst St. Joseph leans on his traveller's staff, a charmed spectator.

(p. 106)

Nevertheless, his sympathy lay with another painting, which generally enjoyed a lower reputation, but whose workmanship he admired more: 'Portrait of a Cardinal'.

Raphael, 'Portrait of a Cardinal' (c. 1510-1511)
[The Prado, Madrid]

According to Ricketts the 'slight coldness in scale of colour' was attributable 'to the picture-cleaner'. He admired 'the delicate modelling of the mouth', while the cap and cape were painted 'with extraordinary care and breadth' (p. 106-107).

We may sometimes feel out of touch and out of love with Raphael, but with him we are never conscious of vagueness and insufficiency: touch the outer softness of his work, and we feel the pulse of a tremendous vitality.

(p. 116)

Ultimately, Ricketts wrote, the Prado's Raphael collection was too limited to form an opinion about the painter. 

In his other art historical monograph, Titian (1910), Ricketts compared Titian to Raphael:

If the unique quality in the art of Raphael might be described as an unfailing sense of rhythm, the rhythmic sense, though great in Titian, is crossed by a greater hold upon realities which he marshals into a rhythmic whole, without Raphael's tendency to transmute them into the terms of his own convention.

(p. 171) 

In his art historical writings, Ricketts focused on Raphael's paintings, but for the Vasari Society – and this was perhaps one of the appealing aspects of the undertaking – he was able to examine the painter's drawings. 

Raphael was the artist about whom he wrote the most pieces for The Vasari Society; incidentally, this series of articles only began with the Second Series in 1920. However, Ricketts's first contribution was about a drawing he ascribed to Raphael, while a footnote referred to Oskar Fischel who was of the opinion that the drawing was by Perugino. The MET, where the drawing is now kept, is a little less certain and has ascribed the drawing to the 'Workshop of Perugino' (see the MET's website).

In 1922, Ricketts devoted some paragraphs to Raphael's drawing 'Cartoon for Madonna and Child' from the collection of the British Museum.

Raphael, Drawing, cartoon (the Virgin and child)
[British Museum, London:
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license]

Ricketts's contribution was signed 'C.R.':

In the National Gallery the unfinished Madonna, bequeathed by Miss Makintosh, commonly called the Madonna of the Tower (from the Orléans, Hope, and Rogers Collections), has been generally accepted as a Raphael, and the relation between this and the magnificent cartoon in the British Museum is manifest; in this last the rough indication of the general design is a sketch, but the treatment of the heads is intense and almost Leonardesque and full of a sense of entranced and ardent life. Unlike most of Raphael's Madonnas, the hair is not parted on the forehead, but thrown back and held by a band, as it is in the St. Catherine in the Madonna di San Sisto and in the Galatea in the Farnesina Fresco: despite this detail, and owing to surviving influences of Leonardo and even Fra Bartolomeo, the present writer would date the cartoon about 1512; there are points of similarity between the type of the Virgin and some of the Muses in the background of the Parnassus.

The British Museum now dates the drawing to 1509-1511.

In Part IV of the Second Series Ricketts very briefly discussed Raphael's 'Portrait of Himself as a Boy' (from the collection of The Ashmolean Museum):

Despite the age of the artist this exquisite drawing must be classed with the early studies made for the Coronation of the Virgin. Even under the influence of Perugino Raphael as a draughtsman was himself from the first. Here he is possessed of that tender vision and delicately tempered power which has given him his place in art.

The Ashmolean nowadays describes the drawing as 'Portrait of an unknown youth, possibly a self-portrait'.

Two more drawings from The Ashmolean were given short comments, and of one of these Ricketts wrote:

To men of Raphael's range and gift this exquisite drawing counted but as a step in the creation of yet finer things.

Ricketts not only examined every detail in a drawing, but also studied the object as a historical relic: what had happened to it since the master's hand had left it untouched? An example is his entry in Part V of the Second Series about a drawing in the collection of Windsor Castle: 'Christ Giving the Keys to Peter' (now known as 'Christ's Charge to Peter'):

Raphael, 'Christ's Charge to Peter'
[Royal Collection Trust]

The deviations in this design from the tapestry cartoon at Kensington (for which it is a study) are too conspicuous for comment, notably in the action of the Saviour, who has been drawn from some model or apprentice of Raphael's, stripped to the shirt, whilst other figures retain entirely or in part their every-day clothes. The composition is not only in reverse but is shaded from left to right; this last characteristic proves that the Windsor page - fine and vivid as it is - is not the actual original but a singularly sharp off-set from a drawing by the master, of which the study for Christ in the Louvre, identical in every stroke of the chalk, is all that is left. The Louvre fragment has been, in part, cut out and mended in the left foot and in the left sleeve. The Windsor version therefore preserves in its entirety (but in reverse) the original design which at some time has been cut up, in all probability, by some dealer.

The website of the Royal Collection Trust explains the procedure of the off-set:

The offset was made by laying a blank, slightly dampened sheet of paper over the original chalk drawing and rubbing the two, producing a reversed impression. Such offsets could be used to monitor the final effect of a composition when the end product reversed the artist’s design, as with tapestries (which are woven from the back) and prints. The present offset may have been made by Raphael for this purpose, for all his studies for the Sistine cycle are in the direction of the cartoons and not of the tapestries, but this is the only surviving example of an offset made in connection with the Sistine tapestries; other extant offsets made in Raphael's studio have no relevance to the creative process and were probably made only as records.

In Part VII of the Second Series, Ricketts devoted five lines to another study by Raphael, which contains in a great measure a 'perfect balance between his gifts of explicit draughtsmanship and enveloping charm'.

All of Ricketts's writings about Raphael show that he regarded him as one of the truly great masters of the Renaissance.

722. Charles Ricketts and The Vasari Society (6)

Charles Ricketts would write twice about Leonardo da Vinci for The Vasari Society, having previously discussed his work in his two books The Prado and Its Masterpieces and Titian. However, in these monographs, Leonardo's name is only mentioned in passing, in comparison to other painters such as Titian:

In the painting of the eyes and flesh of the little faun in the 'Bacchus and Ariadne,' the glazes have been softened with the finger tips - this softening process was also practised by Leonardo.

(Titian, 1910, p. 166)

For Part III of the Second Series (1922) of The Vasari Society Ricketts wrote three comments on sketches by Leonardo da Vinci for the 'Madonna del Gatto', two studies of the Virgin and Christ Child with a cat in the collection of the British Museum and one in the collection of Arthur Hungerford Pollen.

Leonardo da Vinci, sketches for 'The Madonna of the Cat'
At the top: Recto; Below: verso
[Collection British Museum]

The first two were on the recto and verso of one leaf, both pen and wash drawings. The Vasari series first depicts the drawing of the verso (No. 3) and then the recto (No. 4). Ricketts wrote:

In the year 1478 Leonardo began two pictures of the Virgin Mary. One of these has been identified with the Madonna del Fiore, preserved in a damaged condition in Petrograd; the second, the 'Madonna del Gatto', has been lost. Closely allied studies for both pictures are preserved in London, Paris, Florence, and in the Bonnat Collection. The two sketches, here reproduced, No. 4 [recto], with the indication of a window in the background, is so close in conception to the 'Madonna del Fiore' that it may be considered as a study in the evolution of both these early pictures alike. In the drawing No. 3 [verso], which is in part traced through, Leonardo is striving to break with the formality of design of the Petrograd picture, and the simple interrelation of the mother and child of the Madonna del Fiore is replaced by greater movement and a more complex and rhythmic sense of line and mass.

Leonardo da Vinci, 'Madonna with Child and Cat'
[private collection]
[See Wikipedia]

Ricketts wrote about the third sketch, which was then in a private collection in London and is now in New York:

This study bearing on the 'Madonna del Gatto' is more Leonardesque in workmanship and invention than the two already described. All traces of the Verrocchio atelier have vanished; in some respects it is even more mature than the Louvre design for the Adoration of the Magi. The girlish head, the bosom still placed high, would help, however, to class this drawing not later than the early 'eighties'.  In may show the final pose chosen for the Madonna del Gatto; it may also be a somewhat later improvisation on the same theme which we shall find taken up again, later still, in the Louvre sketch for the cartoon of the Virgin and St. Anne, where the cat is replaced by a lamb. 

Such was his admiration for Leonardo that he attributed a drawing in his and Shannon's possession not to the master, but to Lorenzo di Credi, even though Shannon was certain that it must be a work by Leonardo. In 1914, on the basis of new photographs, he changed his mind, saying: 'So Shannon is right and I was wrong'. Later, however, the drawing was attributed, perhaps more cautiously, to Andrea del Verrocchio, and nowadays it is considered to be the work of Fra Bartolomeo. So Shannon was also wrong. [See Fitzwilliam Museum].

A fictionalised Leonardo

Ricketts's story 'The Two Peaches' was published in Unrecorded Histories. Thomas Sturge Moore added a dedication to Charles Shannon. The book was published posthumously in 1933. This story revolves around a fictionalised Leonardo da Vinci. We will never know how Ricketts imagined Leonardo, because this is one of two (out of eight) stories in the book that lack an illustration.

In the first paragraph of the story, Ricketts expresses his admiration for the 'Messere' Leonardo da Vinci, who is called 'this incomparable man', and whose painting skills are 'without a rival'. In the second paragraph, Ricketts combines his art historical observations (see the above quotation from Titian on the use of the artist's fingertips) with his sensitive imagination about the painter's work during the Renaissance.

Shortly after dawn, for no one knew when Leonardo chose to wake or sleep, he was examining a picture of Our Lady, St. John and an Angel adoring the Holy Child in a landscape of rocks, on which he had lavished his utmost skill, even softening the texture of the flesh with his finger-tips to imitate the grain of the skin; portions of the design were still unfinished, the completion of a task tempered the fire of his imagination, causing him to abandon many things that were well begun.

(p. 59)

This last observation seems to be based in part on Ricketts's own experience, who was extremely uncertain about his talent as a painter, but this also had historical roots, because Da Vinci's clients demanded side panels, which the artist preferred to leave to local painters.

The painting in question - 'The Virgin on the Rocks' - was well known to Ricketts, as it had been acquired by the National Gallery in London in 1880.

Leonardo da Vinci, 'The Virgin of the Rocks',
oil on wood, about 1491/2 and 1506/8
[Collection National Gallery, London]
[Creative Commons agreement]

Ricketts's view of art as an autonomous domain is, as the reader quickly realises, also the view of Leonardo da Vinci:

'Art should be divorced from any consideration but itself,' thought the Master as he covered his work and the offending panels with a cloth to protect them from the dust.

(p. 60)

The story seems to have been written partly to describe the disorderly wealth of a painter's and inventor's studio and secluded garden in listings of various objects. In the sequel, Ricketts describes Da Vinci's experiments with poisoned crocus and peaches, introducing the other inhabitants of the studio: the painter of the panels, the cat, a monkey and his housekeeper. Leonardo dismisses the local painter before receiving a visit from a court lady, a mistress of the Duke, who has to hide between the artefacts in the studio as the latter suddenly appears. While the others, one by one, talk about the uses of poison, Leonardo makes sure they leave the crocus and peaches alone. The Duke likens lovers to artists:

'Do you sometimes tire of your picture as I tire of my women?'

Leonardo smiled rather sadly before saying, 'The desire for artistic perfection is arduous, O Prince; we lovers and artists alike grope for a light hidden from our human darkness... and ... sometimes I feel I am painting on the Night.'

(p. 65)

Incidentally, the Duke needs a gift for the French king, and Da Vinci helps him with this. After the Duke has departed, his mistress turns out to have disappeared as well, while the cat is lying 'among dusty bones'. Leonardo puts away his notebook and the crocus, but cannot find the peach anywhere. It then transpires that his dismissed assistant has given a better pupil a peach, who is now dying. Leonardo rushes to his bedside and hears that he is on the mend, but that Lucrezia, the Duke's wife, has suddenly died. Back in his studio, he wants to gather up all the peaches, but hears that his housekeeper has given the last fruits to his monkey. Fortunately, he sees that the monkey is alive and well in his cage, with the pits of two peaches next to him.

Before the poisonings take place and, apparently thanks to the presence of the painting of 'The Virgin on the Rocks', the cat and monkey are saved from death, Da Vinci works through the night, paying little attention to food or other distractions, occasionally muttering a piece of Ricketts wisdom, such as:

Things mortal pass away, but not art.

(p. 67)

In addition to a high ideal when it comes to art, with a certain disdain for worldly matters - which, incidentally, are elegantly resolved by the painter in a businesslike manner - the story expresses a deep love for animals, more so than for people.

721. Charles Ricketts and The Vasari Society (5)

Although Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) was one of the most important influences on Ricketts's work, he did not write often about this Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter. In a chapter on early Venetian painting in The Prado and Its Masterpieces (1903), Ricketts dedicated a paragraph to Rossetti, comparing his influence to that of the fifteenth-century painter Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco):

I think that if we turn for a moment to Rossetti and his influence in England upon his contemporaries, or upon men slightly his juniors, such as Burne-Jones and Morris, we have something analogous in the wave of luminous thought, caught, refracted, and developed beyond its initial impulse perhaps, and touching other men, those even who were not actually inside the circle or peculiarly apt to understand : and we note in the influence of the founder of the aesthetic movement in England something not unlike the influence of Barbarelli in Venice - an influence of suggestion, an influence making towards the expression of personality and the worship of beauty.
(The Prado and Its Masterpieces, p. 122)

D.G. Rossetti, ''Golden Water (Princess Parisade)'

From the collection of Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon

[The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Creative Commons License (BY-NC-ND)]

Just before the Prado book was published, Ricketts's friends Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper ('Michael Field') had compared him to Rossetti, but Ricketts insisted that the comparison was flawed: 

[...] Rossetti was a man of action, instinctive, self-centred, or central: a fat man, in fact, whilst I am a spare man, a spectator, not a man of action, outwardly and inwardly a contemplative man.

(Self-Portrait, 1939, p. 104)

In 1928, once again, he was likened to Rossetti and objected:

[...] he is one of the most singular & original men in art; even his latest & most undelectable works, done when he was half-blind & mad with chloral, are unlike anything else.

(Letter to Mary Davis, 3 October 1926)

In 1928 Ricketts published a review of Hall Caine's Recollections of Rossetti (London: Cassell & Co., 1928): 'The Tragedy of Rossetti. A Corroding Secret. Genius Amongst Us, Not of Us' (The Observer, 14 October 1928):

The key to most of Rossetti's qualities and limitations is to be found in his Italian atavism. [...] In all the essentials of his mental composition he belonged to another country and perhaps to another time. 

[...]

Rossetti never painted grass as Ruskin saw it; to him, as with Dante, it had the hue of new-cleft emeralds.

The designs he executed before 1860 have a directness and conciseness unique even in Italian art; even the relation of the figures to the frame - "la couple" as Dégas [Degas] would say, is new. [...] 

[...] his was the gift to enlarge the purposes of art. To-day, because the level of our general culture is less and the War has put a gap in the continuity of our European conscience, Rossetti has become inexplicable at least to some reviewers. His life raises morbid curiosities, and owing to the singular and unique character of his gifts, he seems a man of another epoch, and another place - in brief, not one of us.

D.G. Rossetti, 'Ballad of Fair Annie'
(drawing, c. 1855)
[See Rossetti Archive]

In 1924, for Part V of the Second Series of The Vasari Society for the Reproduction of Drawings by Old Masters, Ricketts wrote a short description of Rossetti's 'Sketch Illustrating a Ballad', a drawing from the collection of J.P. Heseltine:

This exquisite drawing has been described as 'The Two Sisters', in all probability it illustrates the ballad of 'Fair Annie'. The racy and mordant penmanship belongs to the artist's practice during the fifties (circa 1855). Rossetti's compact and dramatic designs of this type are without precedent in the art of the past, they count amongst the most individual achievements of this profoundly original and significant artist.

The drawing was later reproduced in Virginia Surtees' The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882). A Catalogue Raisonné (1971) - the catalogue entry does not mention or quote Ricketts's short piece about the drawing or The Vasari Society's reproduction.

Shannon and Ricketts owned eleven or more drawings by Rossetti, one of which was rediscovered by Ricketts before 1890: 'Mary Magdelene at the Door of Simeon the Pharisee'. All are now in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum. (See, for example 'Mary Magdelene'.)

720. Charles Ricketts and The Vasari Society (4)

In 1936, Christie, Manson & Woods issued the catalogue of The Famous Collection of Old Master Drawings Formed by the Late Henry Oppenheimer, Esq., F.S.A., which was for sale from 10-14 July. Oppenheimer (born in Frankfurt am Main, 1859) had died in London four years earlier, in 1932. One of the items was a drawing by Goya, which was acquired for the Frick Collection, and had been reproduced by The Vasari Society, Second Series, Part II, in 1921.

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, 'The Anglers' (1812-20)
[Frick Collection, New York]

Charles Ricketts wrote the accompanying note about 'Anglers under a Rock' (Collection of Henry Oppenheimer, Esq. From the Fairfax Murray Collection. Brush Sketch in sepia. 19.5 x 13.5 cm':

The chances which control the preservation of painters' sketches and studies have, so far, deprived us of early examples by Goya. The style of this design classes it with something like certainty within the period when he executed the Disasters of War. The writing on the paper below the wash in the upper part of the composition is not a comment on the design itself, as is sometimes the case with Goya's sketches.

The editor of the series added that the inscription (in another hand) contains a transaction about a loan from 1799.

The book collection of Henry Oppenheimer was also sold by Christie, Manson & Woods on 27 July 1936. It contained a complete set of The Vasari Society reproductions and, moreover, divided over four lots were no less than 36 copies of the Second Series, Part II, which reproduced some of the most important drawings from the Henry Oppenheimer Collection. 

Charles Holmes devoted an essay on the collection in The Studio (September 1936) - 'Henry Oppenheimer - A Collector and His Ways'. One of the illustrations was the Goya drawing (page 131). Holmes remembered Oppenheimer as a remarkable man who had 'no specialist knowledge' and did 'not concentrate upon any single province of art', as most collectors did. He wrote:

Where the field covered is as wide as Henry Oppenheimer's, the knowledge needed is more than any single man can expect to acquire. My friend Charles Ricketts alone came near to such universality of connoisseurship.

The Goya Drawing at The Frick

The drawing - brush and brown wash on paper - is now titled simply 'The Anglers', and dated 1812-20, which, indeed, is from the artist's later life when he worked on the Disasters of War (1810-1820). The Frick's description reads:

Goya’s works on paper poignantly document the brutalities of war and the social turmoil that plagued Spain, often depicting members of the working class. For this drawing, Goya repurposed a bill dated July 1 of the year 1799, legible at the top of the sheet. To disguise the area of text, Goya uses a dark brown wash that places the fishermen beneath an overhanging shadow, reminiscent of a stormy sky or the interior of a cave. Drawing on used paper was unusual for Goya. The blank reverse of this sheet has led to the suggestion that the artist was inspired by an existing blemish on the paper, which prompted the scene from his imagination. Lending theatricality and drama to an everyday activity, the figures stand in sharp contrast to their light-filled background, a common motif in Goya’s drawings.

Ricketts and Goya

In addition to his brief annotation, Ricketts wrote an entire chapter on Goya in his study The Prado and Its Masterpieces (1903): 'The Spanish School and the Art of Goya'. It discusses his paintings (especially portraits), character, influence, designs for tapestry, and etchings:

The art-lover will constantly find in the paintings of the Spaniard food for astonishment and study; yet only in his prints does Goya really aim at a perfect or balanced effect in art. It is here that he elaborates his 'convention,' that he is supremely and adequately himself.

[...]

It is by his power of design - an original, varied, and nervous form of design - that he excels even more than by his vivacity of workmanship and his marvellous if unequal gift of expression.

The second part of this passage was quoted by Joseph Darracott in his exhibition catalogue All for Art (1979). The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge now owns the three original drawings from the collection of Ricketts and Shannon (these were never reproduced by The Vasari Society): 'Comico descubrimiento', 'The pen is mightier than the sword' and 'Segura union natural' (see All for Art, nos. 130-2).

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, 'Segura union natural' (undated)
[Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge]
[Creative Commons License (BY-NC-ND)]

The last of these three drawings is, to quote Darracott, 'a light-hearted comment on the indissoluble bond of marriage'.

The three drawings from the collection of Ricketts and Shannon can be found on the museum's website (search for Goya).

719. Charles Ricketts and The Vasari Society (3)

The brief articles Ricketts wrote for the Vasari Society featured artists he often mentioned in his books The Prado or Titian, or in reviews and articles in magazines and newspapers. However, there are a few names that do not appear elsewhere in his work.  

Alfred Stevens

The British sculptor Alfred Stevens (1817-1875) was not an irregular topic of conversation for Ricketts and Shannon, but he never wrote an article about his work. In 1915, D.S. MacColl wrote the introduction to an exhibition catalogue for the National Gallery: Catalogue of Cartoons, Paintings and Drawings by Alfred Stevens for the Decoration for the Dining Room at Dorchester House. These works were lent by George Holford and Alfred Drury.

The Dining Room in Dorchester House
with the chimneypiece by Alfred Stevens on the left side of the room (c. 1905)

The drawing reproduced in the first part of the Second Series of The Vasari Society was lent by Alfred Drury, ‘Study of a Nude Women’, and Ricketts's piece was a cautious one:

This drawing is late in the career of the artist; it may have been done in preparation for some part of the decoration intended for Dorchester House: the workmanship approximates to that period of Stevens's activity. The figure holds an indefinite object -- possibly an urn.

Gravelot

A name that doesn't seem to show up anywhere else in Ricketts's work (including letters) is that of the late 18th-century French rococo book illustrator, engraver, painter and draughtsman Hubert-François Bourguignon, commonly known as Gravelot (1699-1773). He worked in London from 1732 to 1745.

For The Vasari Society, Ricketts discussed a drawing from the collection of the National Gallery of Scotland, 'Man in Flowing Wig Showing a Picture to a Lady with Fan':

This graceful sketch combines something of the France of Watteau and the England of Hogarth, and evokes, in its manner and technique, something which Gainsborough will realize better and with a more spontaneous ability; it might illustrate the De Goncourt's definition of a portion of Gravelot's works, 'touchés dans une manière de dessin légère et claire, dans un esprit d'Hogarth coquet.' It is more than probable that this drawing was executed in England, the character of the lady's dress pointing to this.

Nowadays, the undated drawing is called 'A Fair Connoisseur'.

Hubert-François-Bourguignon Gravelot, 'A Fair Connoisseur' (undated)
[Photo: National Gallery of Scotland,
see: National Gallery of Scotland website]

718. Charles Ricketts and The Vasari Society (2)

From the moment the Vasari Society for the Reproduction of Drawings by Old Masters presented its first portfolio in 1905 until the publication of Part VIII of the Second Series in 1926, Ricketts wrote commentaries on several reproductions. His notes did not concern works from his joint collection with Shannon, but rather works from other collections. 

Antoine Watteau, 'Three Studies of a Black Man's Head'
[auction catalogue of the collection of Max J. Bonn, 1922]

Out of 27 notes, sixteen are about drawings form various institutions:

• Ashmolean Museum (4 notes);
• British Museum (10 notes);
• Collection Royal Library, Windsor Castle (1 note); 
• National Gallery of Scotland (1 note).

Eleven other notes describe works from private collections:

• Max J. Bonn (1877-1943), economist, collector of old master drawings (collection sold at Sotheby's, 14 February 1922) (1);
• Duke of Devonshire  (Victor Cavendish, 1868-1938), collection of Chatsworth House (1);
• Alfred Drury (1856-1944), sculptor (1);
• Alfred E. Gathorne-Hardy (1845-1918), politician, a catalogue of his collection of drawings was published in 1902 (1);
• John P. Heseltine (1843-1929), stockbroker, artist and art collector, sold his collection to Colnaghi & Obach, 1912 (auctions followed in Amsterdam and London, 1913-1920) (1);
• Henry Oppenheimer (1859-1932), collector of prints, drawings, medals and antiquities (3);
• Arthur Hungerford Pollen (1866-1937), journalist, businessman, inventor (1);
• Edward G. Spencer Churchill (1876-1964), army officer, art collector, Trustee of The National Gallery (1).

In his twenty-seven notes, Ricketts discussed works by fifteen artists.

 

• Goya Sec.Ser.II-19
• Gravelot, Hubert François VIII-33
• Leonardo da Vinci Sec.Ser.III-3/4; Sec.Ser.III-5
• Leonardo da Vinci (Manner of) II-3
• Mantegna, Andrea III-6
• Michelangelo Sec Ser.II-6
• Pisanello I-10
• Pisanello (School of) I-11
• Raphael Sec.Ser.I-3; Sec.Ser.III-6; Sec.Ser.IV-6; Sec.Ser.IV-8; Sec.Ser.IV-9; Sec.Ser.V-7; Sec.Ser.VII-6
• Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Sec.Ser.V-20
• Rubens, Peter Paul I-20; II-22; II-23
• Stevens, Alfred Sec.Ser.I-19
• Van Dyck, Antony II-27
• Venetian School V-11
• Watteau, Antoine VIII-32; IX-27; Sec.Ser.IV-17; Sec.Ser.V-16

717. Charles Ricketts and The Vasari Society (1)

The Vasari Society for the Reproduction of Drawings by Old Masters was founded in 1905, and a first portfolio was probably issued in January 1906. Chairman of the committee was Sidney Colvin (1845-1927), Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. 

Sidney Colvin
[from: Memories & Notes of Persons & Places, 1852-1912. 
London: Edward Arnold & Co., 1921

Charles Ricketts described him as follows in a letter from December 1911: 

[...] years have passed and transformed the journalist he then was, into a student; he is besides a gentleman [...]

Ricketts also spent cultural evenings organised by his wife, Frances Jane Colvin. In 1915, for example, he attended a recital by Muriel Lee Mathews and was impressed by her performance.

In 1905, the Committee of The Vasari Society consisted of Martin Conway (art critic, politician, cartographer and mountaineer), Charles Holroyd (painter and director of the National Gallery), Laurence Binyon (poet and curator, working at the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum), Campbell Dodgson (art historian and curator, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum), Roger Fry (painter and art critic), Charles J. Holmes (Slade Professor of Fine Art and c0-editor of The Burlington Magazine), Sid Montague Peartree (art historian and collaborator of The Dürer Society), Claude Phillips (art historian, Keeper of the Wallace Collection), Charles Ricketts and Robert Ross (manager of the Carfax Gallery and literary executor of Oscar Wilde).

With Binyon, Dodgson and Fry, Ricketts (the only member without a university education) formed the Executive Committee. Over the years, the composition of the committees would change, but Ricketts remained an active member until the end of his life.

The reproductions were executed in collotype at the University Press, Oxford. A 'Note' in the first volume explained: 'They are of the same size as the originals, except in the case of drawings exceeding 12 x 10 inches (30.5 x 25.5 centimetres) in size, which have been reduced. The drawings selected are such as admit of reproduction without the employment of more than the two colours usual in collotype, so that the renderings may be regarded as practically exact facsimiles.' 

The reproductions were accompanied by descriptions, 'intended rather as a guide to the student than as definitive critical notices'.

The first series ran from 1905 to 1915, when the World War I caused an interruption. The second series began publication in 1920. On 7 January 1910 The Times reviewed one of the annual issues, and reported 'that the position of the society may be regarded as satisfactory, though the number of subscribers remains more or less stationary.' The newspaper added: 'Needless to say, the more subscribers the society obtains the more drawings it will be able to reproduce. The drawings are very judiciously chosen from all schools, and some of them will probably be new even to students.'

Ricketts contributed to the series in two ways: some drawings from the joint collection of Ricketts and Shannon were reproduced, and Ricketts wrote a number of descriptions to accompany the drawings (these contributions remained unnoticed in his bibliography until now).

Drawings from the Collection of Ricketts and Shannon

Part II (1906) contains a reproduction of Wolfgang Huber's 'The Crucifixion', a pen and ink drawing on white paper, 32 x 21.5 cm. The drawing is listed as number 137 in All for Art (Fitzwilliam Museum, 1979): 'The drawing has been dated c. 1525. It may be connected with a lost altarpiece which Huber painted in Passau during the 1520s.' This information is not given in The Vasari Society edition for which Campbell Dodgson wrote the description.

Wolfgang Huber, 'The Crucifixion' (c. 1525)
[Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge]
[Creative Commons License (BY-NC-ND)]

In the years that followed, nine more drawings from their collection were selected for The Vasari Society edition: 

Index of Drawings from the Collection of CR and CHS [with links to the Fitzwilliam Museum Collection]

 

Barye, Antoine Louis Sec.Ser.VIII-15

Florentine School (Andrea del Sarto?) IV-5

Wolfgang Huber II-20

Lorenzo di Credi IV-1

North Italian School Sec.Ser.VIII-2

Rembrandt Sec.Ser.I-7

Verrocchio (School of) Sec Ser.III-2

Watteau, Antoine III-33, III-35; V-37

The second drawing (Florentine School) is now attributed to Fra Bartolomeo. The fifth drawing (North Italian School) is now attributed to Francesco Francia. The seventh drawing (Verrocchio) is now attributed to Fra Bartolomeo.

For Lorenzo di Credi, see also All for Art, number 111.

For Rembrandt, see also All for Art, number 165.

For Verrocchio, see also All for Art, number 203.

For Watteau (III-35), see also All for Art, number 204.

For Watteau (V-37), see also All for Art, number 206. 

Antoine Watteau, 'Reclining Lady seen from Behind' (undated)
[Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge]
[Creative Commons License (BY-NC-ND)]

716. Charles Ricketts From A to Z

With the deadline for the copy of The Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts fast approaching, John Aplin and I, as editors, are working feverishly to dot the i's and cross the t's. One of the major tasks was the general index compiled by John, which I have just finished reading. Some people (myself included) enjoy reading indexes. They always tell the story in a different way. I won't spoil the surprise of how this works with Ricketts's letters; you'll want to discover that for yourselves. For now, let's just look at the A and the Z. What is the first keyword in the index and what is the last?

Abbey Theatre, Dublin I. 268 n.4, 384 n.2, 468 n.6, 524 II. 860 n.6
The Abbey Theatre in Dublin is mainly mentioned in the footnotes of letters from Ricketts to W.B. Yeats and Katharine Bradley in which he comments on certain actors or plays, such as Frank Fay and Lady Gregory, both co-founders of the theatre. At the end of 1905 Ricketts wrote to Yeats:

We hope you are well & all your friends in Ireland 'the nation of the Drama' and that Dublin thinks of nothing else but plays.

In a letter to the Editor of The Times (21 February 1912) Ricketts mentioned the Abbey Theatre in his plea for 'Municipal Drama and Opera'.

Zoffany, Johan III. 1433, 1446

The name of Zoffany came up in two letters to Eric Brown of the National Gallery in Ottawa when Ricketts was appointed their advisor in December 1923. Ricketts wrote:

In the mean time, realizing that you have £1,000 till March, I have made some enquiries concerning a most exceptional life size full length by Zoffany (woman in blue silk dress, book in hand sitting under a tree) which sold last year for £600. The name Zoffany does not convey the exceptional merit of the work which recalled an early Gainsborough with something more explicit (almost French) in the workmanship. The Dealer had purchased it on commission.

Johann Zoffany,
'Self-portrait as David with the head of Goliath' (1756)
[National Gallery of Victoria]

However, soon it turned out that the painting was unobtainable, because a collector did not want to part with it. Johann Zoffany (Johannes Josephus Zaufallij) was a German neoclassical painter who was born in 1733 and moved to England in 1760. He died in Chiswick in 1810.