Wednesday, February 5, 2025

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]

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

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.)

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

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.

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

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).

Wednesday, January 8, 2025

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).

Wednesday, January 1, 2025

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.]

Wednesday, December 25, 2024

699. The Triumph of Beauty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday, December 18, 2024

698. An Unknown Early Drawing by Charles Shannon

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

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

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

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

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

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

[See next week's blog!] 

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

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.

Wednesday, December 4, 2024

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.

Wednesday, November 27, 2024

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.

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

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.

In fact, Ricketts made a sketch (BM 1946.0209.42) of 'two clothed figures; one appearing to embrace the other reclining figure and lower into a grave, spade driven into ground nearby'. It is executed in pen and ink touched with white bodycolour.

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

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 GrayIntentionsThe 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.  

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

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].

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

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.