709. Barry Humphries ("Dame Edna")'s Collection (Sequel)

Following the high-profile auction of The Personal Collection of Barry Humphries at Christie's - see blog 703. Barry Humphries ("Dame Edna")'s Collection - Forum Books in London announces the sale of The Library of Barry Humphries in a series of auctions starting on 26 March.

Preview of The Library of Barry Humphries (Forum Auctions, image dd 2 March 2025)

The catalogue is not yet available online, but a preview is provided and from certain items one is referred to similar lots, which apparently will also be in the catalogue (but are not part of the preview). For example, the edition of R.M. Rilke's Duineser Elegien in English (Cranach Presse, 1931) mentions, at the bottom of the page, some 'related lots', quite randomly however. On my first reading of the page on Duino Elegies, I was referred to three works, one of which was Daphnis and Chloe by Ricketts and Shannon - in addition to two other editions (a Gregynog edition and a German private press edition) - the second time I was shown Daphnis and Chloe as well as Hero and Leander (in addition to the same German private press edition) and these lucky coincidences never seemed to repeat themselves in the same constellation, sometimes showing no Ricketts material at all but works by the Whittington Press or Editions Narcisse, and every now and then the Duino Elegies itself can be found among the ‘related lots’. 

Preview of The Library of Barry Humphries (Forum Auctions, image dd 2 March 2025)

It is an effective way to tempt you to keep searching through the collection without ever knowing whether you have seen all the interesting objects.

By occasionally viewing the preview again, one is also presented with different selections. For example, a copy of Silverpoints by John Gray popped up, a copy of the ‘regular’ edition, but with a nice attachment and provenance.

Letter from John Gray to Elkin Mathews
about Silverpoints
(Forum Auctions, March 2025)

This copy has the bookplates of Thomas Hutchison and the pre-Raphaelite collector William E. Fredeman, and, tipped in, a note by John Gray about the proofs:

This is the way these pages should be arranged - as I have numbered them - according to Mr. Ricketts. So now Mr. Leighton can proceed with the binding.

Going back and forth through the listed items I stumbled upon some other Ricketts related items, such as one of fifty large-paper copies of J.A. Symonds's In the Key of Blue and Other Prose Essays (1893) with an ink gift inscription dated January 1893, in the vellum cover designed by Ricketts, and another copy of Silverpoints (no. 219/250), a variant on Spalding paper.

708. Charles Ricketts's Spelling Skills

Ricketts never seems to have received regular education in the English language - he did, after all, spend part of his youth in France - and as a result, his spelling of English words was often fanciful.

He often misspelled words (including names) and was aware of this. In many letters he acknowledged that he didn't know how a certain word should be written. Below are just a few examples. 

Arum flower

In a letter from 1894, Ricketts wrote to Michael Field (Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper) that he and Charles Shannon disagreed about the spelling of the name of a flower:

We had covered our table with apples and arums (the artists are quarrelling as to how this word is spelt). It is a white flower like a twist of paper with a yellow stick inside.
(British Library Add MS 58087, f 11)

In an 1898 letter to the same, he toyed with his incorrect spellings:

I hope I have spelt Theodor[e] Watts Dunton’s name all wrong.

(BL Add MS 58087, ff 108-10)

He also used his faulty spelling to express opinions, for example about a dog. A year later, in another letter, he wrote:

I hope I’ve spelt Basset wrong.
(BL Add MS 58087, ff 126-8)

Three years later, Bradley read a letter about archaeology:

I hope my spelling is not worse than ever, I feel every other word is wrong but dare not corect correct.
(BL Add MS 58087, ff 196-8)

In a letter to Laurence Binyon (1905) he ascribed a painting to an Italian painter:

to be ascribed to Jacob P papa Bellini – I dont know how to spell Jacob.

(BL Loan MS 103 10/1)

The announcement of a wrong spelling, followed by the correct spelling occurs repeatedly, for example in a letter to Robert Ross from February 1916.

I wrote pounds because, for the moment, I did not know how to spell guineas. 

(BL Add MS 81717)

In many cases, he did not correct himself because he did not see the errors - he consistently added an acute accent to the spelling of Degas: 'Dégas'. In other cases he really did not know how a (for example medical) term should be spelled. In 1918 he wrote to W.B. Yeats:

For the last five days or so I have been put to bed and visited by a Doctor having had – I still have – a bad touch of Laryngitis which wanted to develop into Neumonia something which I cant spell, [p]neumonia.

(Stony Brook, W.B. Yeats Collection, SC 294, Box 51)

In a letter to Cecil French from 1927 he offers a general excuse:

Pardon spelling & punctuation. I have been talking & thinking in French and dont know if some of this makes sense.

(Houghton Library MS Eng 1738)

Although he continued to make one spelling mistake after another in later years, it seems that he no longer cared and rarely apologised for them.

707. The Chairs in The Vale

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

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

A chair in the Vale, c.1889

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

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

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

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

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

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

706. Hokusai in the Ricketts and Shannon Collection

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

Hokusai in the Ricketts and Shannon Collection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Katsushika Hokusai,

'The Waterfall where Yoshitsune Washed his Horse in Yoshino,

Yamato Province' from the series of

Tour of Waterfalls in Various Provinces (c.1833)

[Collection The British Museum]

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

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

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

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

                                                                                                  Mariko Hirabayashi

References:

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

See also:

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

705. Charles Ricketts, a Design for Salome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Hammer price was: £9.000.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

702. Orlando

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

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

The website proudly announces:

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

(See the Alberta pages on The Orlando Project.)

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

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

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

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

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

701. A Portrait of the Artist as a Reader

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

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

and at the end of the same letter he suggests:

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

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

Marie was Marie Appia, of French descendent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

700. Ricketts and Cézanne

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MacColl remarked (on 23 December 1939):

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

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

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

[See Pages on Art at Internet Archive.]

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

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

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

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