270. Small Exhibition Charles Ricketts 1866-2016

On the 1st of October, a small themed exhibition will be opened in Museum Meermanno to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Charles Ricketts's birth on 2 October 1866, 150 years ago.

The exhibition explores Ricketts as a narrator/illustrator, who takes a story, and moves it in another direction by means of his imagery. On show are his wood-engravings, sketches and proofs for The Parables from the Gospels (1903) and (reproductions of) his drawings for Oscar Wilde's prose poems, and the prose poems he remembered Wilde told him, recorded in his Oscar Wilde, Recollections and Beyond the Threshold.

Last Monday, Ellen van Schie of the Museum Meermanno and I, arranged the objects in four of the museum's cases on the second floor.

Ellen van Schie, Museum Meermanno, arranging objects

A view of the small exhibition room in Museum Meermanno

The arrangement of original pencil sketches, proofs, and wood-engravings for The Parables from the Gospels invites the viewer to have a close look at Ricketts's treatment of the texts, the visual details, the movements, and the introduction of worldly details in biblical stories.

Sketches, proofs and wood-engravings for The Parables

The show opens on 1 October, 15.00 hours in Museum Meermanno in The Hague.

269. Invitation and Announcement

268. The 2nd of October

The date of 2 October is drawing near:

Birthday of King Richard III, of England (1452), Isabella of Naples, Duchess of Milan (1470), Saint Charles Borromeo, Italian cardinal (1538), Jacob Louys, Flemish engraver (1595), Andreas Gryphius, German lyric poet and dramatist (1616), François-Timoléon de Choisy, French writer (1644), Guillaume Poitevin, composer (1646), Frantisek Ignac Antonin Tuma, composer (1704), Leopold Widhalm, Austrian luthier (1722), Franz Schneider, composer (1737), Samuel Story, Dutch admiral (1752), Jacob van Strij, Dutch cartoonist/graphic artist, and Josef Jawurek, composer (1756), William Carr Beresford, 1st Viscount Beresford (1768), Philip Cipriani Hambley Potter, pianist/composer (1792), Anton Emil Titl, composer (1809), Gunnar Wennerberg, composer (1817), George Washington Getty, Bvt Major General (1819), Alexander Peter "Old Straight" Stewart, Lt Gen (1821), Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello, Dutch Internal minister (1822), Edmund Jackson Davis, Brigadier General (1827), Charles Floquet, French statesman (1828), Edward Burnett Tylor, English anthropologist, and Julius von Sachs, botanist/naturalist (1832), Rev. William Corby, American Catholic priest (1833), Louis A. Ranvier, French anatomist/historian (1835), Hans Thoma, German painter (1839), Paul von Hindenburg (1847), Ferdinand Foch, military commander (1851), William Ramsay, chemist (1852), Marthinus T. Steyn, President of Orange-Free state (1857), and Charles Ricketts (1866), and, among others: Wallace Stevens, poet (1879), Dick Ket, painter (1902), Graham Greene, writer (1904), Vivian Ridler, printer (1913), Jan Morris, travel writer (1926), Annie Leibovitz, photographer (1949)...

Soon you may find out what this image has to do with Charles Ricketts:

267. A Drawing for Judith

At the end of this month, Christie's auction includes a drawing by Charles Ricketts, a costume design for Judith.

Charles Ricketts, costume design for 'Judith'

The drawing was for the design of the costume of two (of the) slaves in Arnold Bennett's Judith, which was staged in 1919. Other designs for this production are now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. A similar sketch on a post card was offered for sale by Leicester Galleries.

Charles Ricketts, costume design for 'Judith'

The drawing at Christie's is described as: pencil, watercolour, gouache and silver paint, signed with initials 'CR' (lower right), 38x26,5 cm. 

On 27 September, it is expected to fetch GBP 1,000 to 1,500. The drawing is offered in the sale of Brian Sewell's collection. Sewell (1931-2015) worked at Christie's as a specialist of old master paintings and drawings. Later he became an art dealer, and a critic with a hostile view of conceptual art and the Turner Prize. He is known for having argued that 'the public doesn't know good from bad' in artistic matters.