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. 

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.

694. Stories After Nature

From 1892, Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon were thinking about books they wanted to illustrate and publish. Many of those original plans never materialised, such as an edition of Song of Songs announced in 1892 in a prospectus for the second issue of The Dial, or an edition of The Voiage and Travaille of Sir John Maundeville mentioned in a prospectus for Daphnis and Chloe. Other projects were mentioned in letters to publisher John Lane, who distributed their work, or were suggested by Oscar Wilde, even when he was already imprisoned. The longest list comes from an October 1894 letter to American publisher F. Holland Day: it included editions of, among others, Charles Lamb, John Webster, Catullus, Richard Crashaw, Plato, Thomas Gray, Walter Pater and Richard Lovelace.

More than twenty years later, Ricketts sometimes thought back to such plans, referring to ideas he did not mention before. On 30 March 1915, he wrote to Gordon Bottomley:

I remember Wells’ play very dimly, I thought it wordy at the time. His Stories after Nature pleased me. I even contemplated publishing it with woodcuts in the old days of the Vale.

Charles Wells, Stories after Nature (1891), cover

Charles Wells's play - published under the name H.L. Howard - was called Joseph and his Brethren. A Scriptural Drama in Two Acts, issued by G. and W.B. Whittaker in 1824. Two years earlier Wells had published (anonymously) his Stories after Nature (London, T. and J. Allman, and C. And J. Ollier, 1822). The play was reprinted in 1876 with an introduction by Algernon Charles Swinburne. The stories were reprinted in 1891 by Lawrence and Bullen with a preface by W.J. Linton. 

What was so appealing about these stories that Ricketts wanted to make wood-engravings to accompany them?

Charles Wells, Stories after Nature (1891), title page

Some of the stories are set in ancient times, for example in Sparta. The main characters are often dukes, princes, kings or members of their court in France or Italy during the Renaissance. Other stories are set in late-medieval Britain. There are disguises, kidnappings, violence, tyranny, love stories, betrayals, chivalry, grief and desolation:

He was become the silent image of despair, and sat for hours  on the ground without motion, brooding over his misery. But this melancholy pleasure could not last; his mind fell short of the intensity of his passion, and when he had once lost the clue of his thoughts, his affections became a chaos, and he was no longer able to subdue them to the consideration of the beloved object. At last he came to himself, and was quietly resigned to his hard fate; the violence of his grief subsided into a calm, and he bore his affliction patiently. ('Dion, a King of the Olden Time').

Some stories are about love discovered too late or about unconditional friendship between men, such as 'Edmund and Edward', while others describe the lives of brothers 'who lived as happily as two bachelors could do' ('the Plague').

Charles Wells, Stories after Nature (1891), pp. 124-125

Most of the stories are dramatic, with fortunes abruptly lost, love treacherously met with exile - and it seems that those scenes of a sudden reversal of fortune visually appealed to Ricketts. Both the loss of trust and the regaining of a lover or status might have given him an idea for an image, perhaps not unlike those seen in his edition of The Parables.

693. New Publication: Charles Ricketts's Early Drawings

In August 1889 the first issue of The Dial appeared containing original art work and literary texts by the Vale group led by Charles Shannon and Charles Ricketts. Up to this date all of Ricketts’s drawings had been commissioned works for several art magazines such as The Magazine of Art and The Universal Review, the weekly comic The Alarum and the journal which Oscar Wilde had given a new life, The Woman’s World. Ricketts also published drawings in Cassell’s History of England and other books. These were cartoons, biblical scenes, historical scenes set in Assyria, Egypt, the Roman Empire or Elizabethan England. Contemporary fashion was illustrated with imaginative elements such as cupids at play.

Charles Ricketts, headpiece for The Latest Fashions
(The Woman's World, July 1889)

These early drawings may not have been free work, but they are never entirely without interest and his decorations – initial letters and head- and tailpieces – are in a fluent and symbolic mode, marking the beginning of his own style, as some commentators have mentioned. In all, there were 45 early drawings, which for the first time have been reproduced together in Charles Ricketts’s Early Drawings. Published from December 1885 to August 1889.

 

They give an insight into Ricketts’s early development as a draftsman and provide examples of initials and borders which he would later design for Vale Press books. These early illustrations catch the eye for their modernity, contrast and dramatic scenery, which differed strikingly from illustrations by other artists in the same publications. Fairly soon Ricketts stopped following the conventions of the time, but sought ways to incorporate the influence of D.G. Rossetti into illustrations which would gradually move towards art nouveau. The drawings attracted attention and brought Ricketts the support from publishers, editors, art editors and authors who gave him opportunities which eventually launched his career as designer of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Intentions, The Sphinx and others, whose covers and title-pages would change British book design.

Charles Ricketts’s Early Drawings, cover 

Paul van Capelleveen

Charles Ricketts’s Early Drawings. Published from December 1885 to August 1889

The Hague, At the Paulton, November 2024

60 pages, 46 illustrations, 24:17 cm

Designed by Huug Schipper (Studio Tint)

Set in Proforma Medium

Printed on Biotop 205 g. by Mostert & Van Onderen, Leiden

Edition limited to seventy-five numbered copies

 

Price: € 25,00

Including packaging and shipping:

Netherlands: £30,00.

European Union: €36,00.

United Kingdom: €36,00.

USA and Canada: €39,00.

 

How to order?

Please send an email to Paul van Capelleveen [see the address in the right-hand bar]. You will receive a Paypal invoice, or we can suggest other ways of payment.  

692. Laurence Irving About Ricketts

Laurence Irving (1897-1988) talked about his work as a stage and film designer for the Art Workers Guild in 1964. [See for his meeting Ricketts as a student, blog 690]. The Art Workers Guild was founded in 1884 by architects and designers in need of a meeting place for the fine arts and the applied arts. A great range of crafts - over forty in 1909, over sixty at present - has been represented in the guild, including type-design and photography. Members included C.R Ashbee, Arthur Gaskin, Emery Walker, T.J. Cobden-Sanderson, Eric Gill, David Kindersley and William Morris. Walt Disney was among the honorary members. Men were long in the majority, but in later years women also became members, such as Judith Bluck and Mary Jane Long.

By 1964, when Irving gave his talk, the guild was no longer in the mainstream of artistic thinking, and was preserving values which were unfashionable. (A lot has changed since then.)

The Art Workers Guild at 6 Queen Square, London
[Photo: Art Workers Guild,
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license]

From 1913, the Guild has been based at 6 Queen Square in Bloomsbury. Laurence Irving is listed as a member in 1933, but apparently only in that year. In his 1964 speech, he said that the secretary of the Guild asked him to deliver a lecture at the time, but he could not remember what he had spoken about. All he remembered was that George Bernard Shaw had sat in the front row - a lifelong enemy of his grandfather the actor Henry Irving. More than thirty years later, he again was asked to give a lecture on his work, which was announced in The Stage of 12 November 1964: 'Laurence Irving on Scene Changes, or, Thirty Years After'. The event was scheduled for the next day, Friday 13 November 1964, at 7 p.m. Admission was free.

'Art Workers Guild', announcement in The Stage, 12 November 1964, p. 13

A typescript of this lecture is preserved in the collection of the University of Bristol Theatre Collection (Ref No BTC30/8/4/13). [See the catalogue description.]

The title partly matches what the announcement in The Stage gave as the subject - 'Changes of Scene', but the date for the lecture is given here as ‘November 18th 1964’.

Irving said that as a young student at the Royal Academy Schools, he wanted to stay as far away from the stage as possible and began his career in the field of graphic art. It was only in 1926, thanks to author A.A. Milne and composer Fraser Simson, that he was persuaded to design scenery and dresses.

I was thrice blessed in being able to assimilate the theoretical and practical teaching of three masters. Charles Ricketts, George Harris and Edward Gordon Craig.

In that order, because he owed the most to Ricketts. Shannon and Ricketts invited him as a student to drop by at one of their Friday night meetings at Lansdowne House, Lansdowne Road, Holland Park.

Ricketts was a master of stagecraft. In him were combined the gifts of scholarship, architectural boldness, a vivid colour sense and a feeling for abstract pattern that revealed itself in the noble simplicity of his settings and the characterisation of his costumes.

His keen intelligence, broad knowledge, playful humour and skillful fingers contributed to him being held in high regard as a designer, although he could not always be patient with actors or authors.

"Men of letters have no taste!" I once heard him cry in exasperation when a poet failed to grasp an effect he was striving for. He meant, I think, that writers have not necessarily the visual imagination that their words imply and yet do not readily accept the illustration of them by another.

Ricketts contributed immensely to the formation of Irving's theatrical convictions. 

In his lecture, Irving said of Gordon Craig that he stripped the stage of irrelevant decorations, greatly influencing all designers after him, but that he could hardly ever put his theories into practice because he was not offered work in the commercial theatre world.

Ricketts, meeting him at the turn of the century, found him "too diffuse".

Irving said a designer should not distinguish between ‘serious and frivolous productions’, between tragedies and comedies, and that it was precisely the variety of genres and subjects that he had found so attractive about his work. Of importance to him was continuity in the collaboration between designer, director and theatre. But by the late 1920s, this was already a rarity.

Only about three Shakespearean productions of note were seen in London during those years and none of them (though two were splendidly designed by Ricketts) had much success.

Irving often saw the artist Rex Whistler at work, admiring his 'imaginative grace and technical mastery'. In his lecture, Irving further elaborated on the form of theatre and its influence on the relationship between actors and audiences. 

Quotes are taken from: Ref No BTC30/8/4/13: Typescript for a lecture given by Laurence Henry Irving to the Art Workers Guild on 18 November 1964 titled 'Changes of Scene' (University of Bristol Theatre Collection).

[Thanks are due to Jill Sullivan, Assistant Keeper (User Services), University of Bristol Theatre Collection].

691 Ricketts & Shannon Discount

Last Saturday, the book website Biblio sent out an advertisement. Until next Sunday, books can be purchased at a discount under the code word Oscar Wilde. 

Biblio.com mail, 26 October 2024

The site gives this kind of discount - as an incentive to purchase used and rare books from antiquarian booksellers - with some regularity. [For the website see Biblio.com.] I usually ignore such messages but this one caught my attention. 

Biblio.com mail, 26 October 2024

The discount code was illustrated with an image from one of Oscar Wilde's fairy tale collections, A House of Pomegranates, with illustrations by Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, or, as the artists put it on the title page:

THE DESIGN & DECORATION OF THIS BOOK BY C. RICKETTS & C.H. SHANNON

Via Biblio.com, two copies of this first edition are now on sale, one for $731.30 ('partially unopened [...] Covers a bit darkened, corners rubbed, hinges weakened with paper cracked, endpapers slightly darkened, engraved bookplate on the front pastedown with the monogram engraved on the plate of R.E 1899, otherwise interior clean and bright') and one for $3,150.00 ('Very good plus to near fine', 'a beautiful copy', 'Housed in cloth-backed marbled paper custom box. Small bookplate on front pastedown. Hinges neatly repaired. Only light soiling to board edges, with a bit of toning to spine. Text block free from foxing').

So the 10% discount might amount to $73 or even $315. However, the maximum discount per order is $20, making these two copies cost $711.30 or $3,130.00 respectively.

690. Laurence Irving Meets Ricketts

In 1922, the artist, book-illustrator and (later) set-designer for films Laurence Irving came to the Keep at Chilham Castle near Canterbury, as Ricketts wrote in letter to W.B. Yeats. Irving (1897-1988) was called 'a nice sensitive youngster' who sketched peacocks in the garden. Trained at the Byam Shaw School of Art, he met Ricketts and Shannon when he continued his training at the Royal Academy School, specialising in landscape and marine painting.

He once told Ricketts's biographer that he had asked Ricketts who the best landscape-painter was, and immediately got the reply: 'Wagner'.(*)

Charles Ricketts, 'Amfortas', design for Richard Wagner's Parsifal
(Supplement to The Illustrated London News, 19 May 1928)

The BBC archives show that he had previously told that anecdote in a more extended form, as he did on the radio programme The Irving Inheritance (interviewer John Miller):

The great influence on me was Charles Ricketts and I remember one night, as a rather callow student, asking Ricketts who he thought were our greatest landscape painters and in a flash he said, 'Tennyson and Wagner!'

And he added:

To me [the poet] Masefield was, I suppose, the supreme marine painter.

(The Irving Inheritance, BBC Radio 4, Sunday 1 March 1981, 19:30 [see the BBC Genome website])

Irving had published book illustrations for a medieval play, Godefroi and Yolande, published by John Lane, The Bodley Head in 1907, and Masefield's Philip the King, issued by William Heinemann in 1927, a year before he went to Hollywood with Douglas Fairbanks to be his Art Director on The Iron Mask.

Rex Whister and Charles Ricketts,
painted by Laurence Irving (1970)

An Irving oil painting from 1970 (see the collection of V&A) depicts Charles Ricketts next to Rex Whistler in the enormous scenic studio of Alick Johnstone, supervising the realisation for Henry VIII and Victoria Regina.

Other BBC programmes related to Ricketts are: Poverty and Oysters (17 August 1979, BBC 2) and Between Ourselves (22 February 1991, BBC Radio 3).

(*) J.G. Paul Delaney, Charles Ricketts. A Biography. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990, pp. 214, 312.

689. Ricketts and The Woman's World

A week ago I received a copy of Articles from The Woman's World Edited by Oscar Wilde, a selection of thirty essays with introduction and notes by Eleanor Fitzsimons. Gyles Brandreth [see the website of The Oscar Wilde Society] had this to say about this impressive new book:

Eleanor Fitzsimons has exploded the myth that Oscar Wilde was a lazy editor. She shows how hard he worked to find the best writers and the best illustrators to make his magazine a beacon of progressive thought regarding women in education, the professions, politics and the arts.

Selected Articles from The Woman's World Edited by Oscar Wilde (2024)

Fitzsimons discusses Wilde's editorial episode, which began in April 1887 when he was asked to be the editor of The Lady's World, half a year before the first issue under his editorship would appear. The time was taken to change the title, lay-out, and the contents of the magazine - the emphasis was now more on what women were thinking than on what they were wearing, although fashion remained an important subject. The introduction shows how Wilde, in his literary notes, supported new and democratic ideas, and invited women with sometimes opposing views to make contributions.

The editor covers contributions from different types of sections - poetry, fiction, literature, fashion, education, industry, employment for women, politics and public life. Although most of the authors were women, the illustrators were all men. Wilde became disappointed with the publisher's lack of support for his plans, both financially and in terms of content he faced constraints, leading to him giving up.

The selection follows the format of the original magazine, the text in two columns, and illustrations (for the introduction) embedded in the text, unfortunately leading to ugly gaps in the consequently short lines of text aligned on either side (see for example page 25). The endpapers are after a design by E.W. Godwin: the original bound volumes of The Woman's World had simple blank endleaves and this busy colourful fabric design - not designed for books bur for furniture - is misplaced in this volume.

Zooming in on Charles Ricketts, we unfortunately may detect some flaws. The short biography (pp. 246-7)  states that Ricketts's mother was French, an error that has been corrected by his biographer Paul Delaney who established that she was Italian. Throughout the book we find illustrations by Ricketts that are not attributed to him and about which a somewhat hidden footnote (p. 302, note 26) comments that they may have been his work. The misconception that Wilde was the one who invited Ricketts to produce illustrations - Ricketts had previously worked for the publisher Cassell and would not meet Wilde until 1889 - is reflected in the comment that theirs was one of Wilde's 'collaborative relationships' (p. 30). Eventually they did become close collaborators but not before 1890.

Not all of Ricketts's illustrations are signed by him, especially the headpieces for the fashion section are quite often missing a monogram, leading Fitzsimons to contradict herself. On the one hand, she says he ‘might’ have made these, on the other, she claims with certainty that they are his work: 'Charles Ricketts may have been the artist responsible for the headpieces to Mrs. Johnstone's articles "The Latest Fashions" [...]' (page 302) and 'From 1889, when Charles Ricketts began drawing playful headers for "The Latest Fashions" [...]' (page 243). Apparently, these drawings have not been examined closely.

There is no reason for doubt. Ricketts designed all the headpieces from February 1889 onwards. The first one is not signed, but the second one is (March 1889).

Charles Ricketts, detail of headpiece (The Woman's World, March 1889)

The double-lined square within the wreath is a simplification of Ricketts's monogram which he used to sign a tailpiece in the same instalment.

Charles Ricketts, detail of tailpiece (The Woman's World, March 1889)

For some articles he combined the CR monogram and the simple square, see for example his illustrations for 'Boots and Shoes' in The Woman's World of May 1889. Shortly, a book about the early illustrations by Ricketts reproducing all of them will be published and announced in this series of blogs.

688. Ricketts, Lettering and Ornament in The Printing Art

In 1907, Addison B. LeBoutillier (1872-1951) - an architect, who was famous for his pottery, and also known for his drawings and etchings - published an article in The Printing Art: A Monthly Magazine of the Art of Printing and of the Allied Arts, edited by Henry Lewis Johnson and published by the University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts: 'Lettering and ornament' (volume 8, no. 6,  February 1907, pp. 385-392). [The Princeton Library copy can be found at Hathi Trust.]

Addison B. LeBoutillier

Addison B. LeBoutillier, 'Lettering and ornament'
(The Printing Art, February 1907, first page)

The article contains six examples of lettering and ornament of which one contains a quote from Charles Ricketts (p. [391]). The text comes from his polemical essay A Defence of the Revival of Printing (1899). The short passage (from pages 10 and 11) deals with the lack of decoration in early Italian printed books, William Morris's ideas about book decoration, and the use of ornamental type.

Addison B. LeBoutillier, 'Lettering and ornament'
(The Printing Art, February 1907, p. [391])

But the illustration is not a simple facsimile of the original edition. The text has been re-set from a letter not designed by Ricketts and placed in a border, with an initial T, which were neither drawn nor published by him.

The border and initial were originally designed for the Boston firm of Copeland and Day for their edition of D.G. Rossetti’s The House of Life (1894). Designed by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, they were later called ‘more cluttered than Morris’s ever were’.(*) They were also much heavier and denser than Ricketts's borders. Goodhue designed 3 borders and 114 initial letters for the Rossetti edition.

D.G. Rossetti, The House of Life (1894),
designed by B.G. Goodhue

The type is not designed by Ricketts nor by Goodhue - it is a copy of Morris's own Troy Type (mentioned by Ricketts in his quote), a version probably made by the American Type Founders, and called Satanick.

Why this text by Ricketts was chosen - he is not mentioned anywhere in the text (Morris, incidentally, is mentioned as an example) - and why it was set in a typeface based on Morris's and why the whole thing was placed in an ornamental border by Goodhue is a mystery. The result hardly qualifies as a typographic unit - at least not in the way Ricketts was striving for.

(*) Quote from William S. Peterson, The Kelmscott Press. A History of William Morris’s Typographical Adventure. Berkeley, California, University of California Press, 1996, p. 302.

687. Advertising for "The Pageant"

The Pageant. MDCCCXCVI, edited by Charles Hazelwood Shannon and J.W. Gleeson White, was issued by the young London firm of Henry & Co. in December 1895. Advertisements were published in several newspapers and weekly magazines, such as The Academy and The Athenaeum (30 November 1895), The Publishers' Circular (14 December 1895), and The Times (18 December 1895).

Earlier, there may have been a prospectus, as several papers quote the publisher's announcement of The Pageant. Early announcements were published in De Kroniek, a Dutch magazine (6 October 1895), Pall Mall Gazette (8 October 1895), and others.

Börsenblatt (2 November 1895)

An almost full-page advertisement in German appeared in the magazine for German bookshops and publishers, Börsenblatt für den Deutschen Buchhandel und die verwandten Geschäftszweige on 2 November 1895. [For a digital image see the website SLUB Dresden.]

The firm of Henry & Co. introduces itself as the German publisher of Richard Muther's Geschichte der Malerei (published by Henry & Co in 1895 as The History of Modern Painting) and the collected works of Nietzsche.

Next, The Pageant is promoted as a Christmas gift book and the execution is praised as 'in the best style', while the content is of supreme artistic and literary quality. A complete list of the contributions follows. About the binding it is said:

The Pageant ist gebunden in einen von C. RICKETTS, dem preciösesten Buchkünstlern, entworfenen Band.

(Translation: The Pageant is bound after a design by C. RICKETTS, the most exquisite book artist.)

Börsenblatt (2 November 1895), p. 6189.

The deluxe edition is mentioned, followed by some business announcements on discounts for pre-order or back-order.

Henry & Co report that they can quickly export English-language works to Germany (there is an ‘Export-Department’) and show interest in German works that can be translated (excluding novels).

I have not found similar ads in other foreign magazines - not even in Dutch newspapers, while some of the publishers at Henry & Co. were Dutchmen. However, J.T. Grein (one of them) wrote a long 'review' for a newspaper: '"The Pageant", een kunstwerk' (An Art Work) [Algemeen Handelsblad, 19 december 1895].

686. Two Copies of The Parables from the Gospels

Contacts between Ricketts and German artist Marcus Behmer have been the subject of blogs before (see in particular blog 624 'Charles Ricketts about Marcus Behmer'), and because the house with Behmer's library was lost during World War II, traces of them are scarce. Some copies of books by Ricketts with handwritten dedications to Marcus Behmer have been preserved, probably because Behmer often stayed with acquaintances outside Berlin or in Italy. Examples are Lord de Tabley, Poems Dramatic and Lyrical (1893) - Ricketts designed the cover - and Ricketts's book of imaginary conversations Beyond the Threshold (1929).

To this short list, we can now add a new title thanks to the digitisation project of the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar.

The Parables from the Gospels (Vale Press 1902)
[Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek, Weimar]

The library owns a copy of the Vale Press edition of The Parables from the Gospels (1902). It is a dedication copy but the dedication is not from Ricketts but from Behmer himself who gifted the book to a close friend:

Für Alexander Olbricht durch Charles Ricketts’ Güte von Marcus Behmer. 8. Oktober 1926

Translation: For Alexander Olbricht, through the kindness of Charles Ricketts, from Marcus Behmer. 8 October 1926

Olbricht (1876-1942), an artist, who specialised in engravings, was a teacher at the Bauhaus between 1921 and 1935. He left 88 books to the Duchess Anna Amalia Library. [See the webpage about the cataloguing project].

The copy of The Parables from the Gospels bears his monogram and the date of 16 June 1933, five years after he received this copy from Behmer. At the back, on one of the blank pages is a long pencil note by Behmer explaining how this gift came about.

Im Sommer 1926 bat ich Charles Ricketts mir mitzuteilen wo ich wohl ein Exemplar dieses Büches bekommen könnte um an A.O. zu geben, der es so sehr liebe.

Mit einem Brief von 17. Aug. schickte mir dann R. ein Exemplar und schrieb dazu ..... By the same post I am sending you a signed copy of the Parables, this will enable you to present your Friend with your old copy, the book is difficult to find. ......." 

                                                                                                8.X.26         M.B. 

[Translation of the German: In the summer of 1926, I asked Charles Ricketts to let me know where I could get a copy of this book to give to A.O., who loved it so much.

With a letter dated 17 August, R. then sent me a copy and wrote: ...] 

Handwritten note by Marcus Behmer in
The Parables from the Gospels (Vale Press 1902)
[Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek, Weimar]

The copy signed by Ricketts was probably lost, but Behmer's own first copy is now available for all to see on the Digitale Sammlungen website [follow this link].

685. A Shannon & Ricketts Exhibition in Munich (3)

Charles Shannon sold lithographs, woodcuts and drawings during and after the large show in Munich at the Heinemann galleries in October 1907. 

For Ricketts, however, the results were unsatisfactory as none of his paintings, bronzes and drawings sold.

However, some of his artworks were also temporarily displayed in Berlin (we don't know where): all of his paintings were dispatched to Berlin during the year, as were two of his drawings and the lithographic poster for The Persians. All of these returned to Munich as Ricketts's work had not found a buyer in Berlin. His 25 works were subsequently returned to London in June 1908. That must have been disappointing.

Charles Ricketts, 'The Holy Women' (1907)

Some of these works are now in public collections, such as:

'The Crucifixion' (The Wilson, Cheltenham);

'Descent from the Cross' (William Morris Gallery, London).

Others were later sold to collectors:

'The Holy Women' (Kōjirō Matsukata);

'The Samaritan at the Inn' (Mona Wilson).

And some works have vanished.

684. A Shannon & Ricketts Exhibition in Munich (2)

Galerie Heinemann in Munich did not send the unsold artworks back to London after the October exhibition in 1907. The works had been taken on consignment at the end of September 1907 and were to remain in the gallery's custody until 13 June 1908.  The paintings thus remained unavailable to other buyers in England or elsewhere for almost a full year; for the lithographs, this did not matter much, as Shannon could dispose of several copies, and so, for that matter, could the gallery. After, for example, 'At the Waters Edge' was sold (as ‘Auf Meeresgrund’),  Shannon sent a second copy, which, however, remained unsold. 

Charles Shannon, 'Alphonse Legros'
lithograph (1896)

After the exhibition ended, another buyer showed up, art historian Dr Otto Weigmann (1873-1940), who in April 1907 had become curator of the Graphic Collection of Munich. On 6 and 13 November 1907 he acquired five lithographs and two drawings (and later he would buy more works).

'Alphonse Legros' (Catalogue No. 40). This was 'Alphonse Legros' (1896).
'Die Badende' (Cat. No. 26). This probably was 'The Bathers' (1904).

'Max Beerbohm' (Cat. No. 24). This was 'Max Beerbohm' (1896).

'Meerwasser' (Cat. No. 29). This probably was another copy of 'Salt Water' (1895).

'Saën und Ernten' (Cat. No. 43). This was 'The Sower and the Reaper' (1904).

'Skizze für ein Portrait-Aquarell' (Cat. No. 66). Sketch for a portrait watercolour.

'Studien in Rötel' (Cat. No. 76). A study in red.

Another copy of 'Badende' was sold to the editors of the magazine Jugend in Munich ('Jugend-Redaktion) on the same day, 6 November 1907, while they also acquired copies of three more lithographs: 'Am Wasser' (original title not established with certainty), 'Die Wanderer' (probably 'The Wayfarers', 1904) and 'Morgen' ('Morning', 1905). 

Not clear is when these works were paid by Weigmann and Jugend. Perhaps, Weigmann acquired the works for the museum, and not for his private collection. Indeed there are works by Shannon in the collection of (now) Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München. However, these were all required after 1907.(*)

However, Shannon got paid for these acquisitions on 6 November when he received the amount of £ 40.2.6, including £10 for the exclusive right to sell some of his paintings (in return for the long time they were unavailable to him).

On the same date, 6 November 1907, another lithograph was sold: ‘Romantische Landschaft’ ('The Romantic Landscape', 1892), the buyer being lieutenant Jaenisch from Munich.

 

Galerie Heinemann, 'Lagerbuch Kommission',
LB-06-32, page 30

Records show that a number of works were sent to Berlin to be sold - where is not clear - Heinemann had no branch there. This probably happened in November 1907. Later, they were largely returned. Apparently Heinemann really made an effort to sell Shannon and Ricketts's works twice, firstly during the Munich exhibition and about a year later, just before the works were to be sent back to London. What was done with them in the meantime cannot be determined.

Indeed, Galerie Heinemann managed to sell sixteen more works by Shannon in June 1908, albeit neither paintings nor drawings. 

On 11 June 1908 four lithographs were sold to Kunsthandel Eduard Schulte which since 1901 had been run by Hermann Gottlob Schulte and Hermann Schulte junior:

'Die Taucherin' Catalogue No. 19). This was 'The Diver' (1895).

'Biondina' (Cat. No. 23). This was 'Biondina' (1894);

'Die Raucher' (Cat. No. 35). This was 'Le fumeur', a portrait of Reginald Savage (1895).

'Venus & Amor' (Cat. No 48). This must have been 'The Little Venus' (1895).

The Schulte firm got a 15% discount and paid DM 182.75. Shannon received £ 7.2.6.

Galerie Heinemann, 'Kassbuch', 11 June 1908
KB-04-23, page 30

Twelve more works were sold the same month: the series of colour woodcuts Shannon had made between 1898 and 1903. Sets of these are now very rare. Purchaser on 25 June 1908, again, was Otto Weigmann.

Each time a lithograph was sold, Shannon sent a replacement copy that often went unsold. In this way, Heinemann handled 109 works by Shannon, of which 32 were sold: one pastel, one watercolour, two drawings, twelve woodcuts and sixteen lithographs.

(*) Dr Andreas Strobl, Head Curator for Nineteenth-Century Art, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, informs me that there are seven prints by Shannon in the collection which were acquired after the Second World War. Due to the incompleteness of the museum's database no more information is available. Andreas Strobl checked the inventories for 1907 which do mention any drawings or prints by Shannon. He reports: 'However, the entire department of English and French prints was burnt down in 1944 along with the Neue Pinakothek, where the rooms of the collection were located at the rime, they would not have been preserved anyway.' (Email from Andreas Strobl to Paul van Capelleveen, 22 October 2024).