48. Ireland where I have never been

I am in Dublin to present a paper at the annual conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP), and although I will not speak about Ricketts, there are many reasons to write about Ricketts and Ireland. He designed books, costumes and theater sets for the works of three major Irish writers, Oscar Wilde, G.B. Shaw and W.B. Yeats.

Writing about the scenery he designed for Yeats's play Well of the Saints he confessed to another Irish writer, J.M. Synge: 'I wish I had been given the time to reason it out properly. I had to work from Yeats's descriptions of Ireland where I have never been' (letter, c. May 1908). It seems his travels always led him in the opposite direction, to France, Italy, Spain and other continental countries.

That aside, he was not very interested in the Irish cause, and would be bored by Yeats's nationalism, but had sympathy for the Irish stage and when the actors came to London he was in the audience. Yeats became the first playwriter for whom Ricketts designed costumes and Yeats and Ricketts worked together on several occasions.

Cover for W.B. Yeats, Essays (1924), designed by Charles Ricketts

One of his later book designs is for Yeats as well, and it was used for six volumes of the collected works that were published by Macmillan from 1922 onwards. The books were bound in green cloth, with a blindstamped design of architectural elements, roses in the four corners (sometimes wrongly identified as birds), sprays of yew and their berries in the corners of the central panel, which also contained circles and circled dots. The design was also used for the dustwrapper. 

Dustwrapper for W.B. Yeats, Essays (1924), designed by Charles Ricketts

Yeats found the designs 'perfect and serviceable', especially the bookplate-like decoration on the endpapers, depicting 'a unicorn couching on pearls before a fountain, backed by a cave full of stars', as Ricketts wrote to Yeats: 'On the crest of the cave is what I believe to be a hawk contemplating the moon'. These symbols were very dear to Yeats, who had wanted them on the cover, which Ricketts found unsuited for the material: a cover stamped in blind required a formal and abstract treatment, or it would look 'poor and ambitious'. It shows how practical Ricketts was as a designer, and also that his later designs are less crowded and much more clear than his very early designs, although his roses can still be taken for birds and his pearls for pebbles.

Decoration on the endpapers of W.B. Yeats, Essays (1924), designed by Charles Ricketts

47. English art and the Netherlands

Rythmus, a yearbook for the study of the fin de siècle, was published earlier this month. It contains twelve essays about English art and literature in relation to art and literature in the Netherlands and Belgium around 1900: Lopende vuurtjes (publisher: Verloren). The contributions are based on papers given at a conference in Groningen (see my blog of 14 September 2011).

Cover of Lopende vuurtjes (2012)

The essays are divided into two categories, one of which is concerned with 'tranfer'; the second theme is 'integration'.  My essay is about the integration of the private press movement in the Netherlands. The abstract reads:

Between the foundation of the first modern private press, William Morris's Kelmscott Press (1890), and the foundation of the first Dutch private press, De Zilverdistel (1910), the private press ideals were introduced in the Netherlands. In the process these ideas were transformed, English ideas were translated into Dutch practices and only partly realized by a small number of presses. A lively debate on modern typography ensued, and the relation between professionals and amateur printers was difficult: the private press was seen by some as a superfluous movement. In this essay, the transition of the private press ideas from the United Kingdom to the Netherlands is described from a personal, semantic and technical perspective. Generation gaps, terminological evolutions, and technical developments influenced the outcome. Contacts between British and Dutch artists were frequently based on one-way traffic, and fuelled by a conscious transnationalism. Delaying factors were diverging literary and artistic goals, as well as divergent commercial motifs. In both countries the ideals of the private press contributed to the design in commercial publishing and the ideals in book design were realized by the 1950s.

The essay frequently mentions the names of Ricketts and Shannon, as the Netherlands is the only country where Ricketts and Shannon were written about earlier than the founder of the Kelmscott Press. However, after his death in 1896, Morris became the major influence on book design for a while, until his books went out of fashion and the pages of Cobden-Sanderson, whose pure typography was better suited to the Dutch taste, became a model of fine printing.

Paul van Capelleveen, 'Van private press naar eigen pers en retour. De introductie van de private press-gedachte in Nederland, 1890-1930', in: Lopende vuurtjes. Engelse kunst en literatuur in Nederland en België rond 1900. Anne van Buul (ed.) Hilversum, Verloren, 2012, p. 197-214, colour plate 11.

46. Sorrows, prayers, gaiety, and consolations

In his diary for 13 June 1900, Charles Ricketts wrote:

With Beethoven the conscious intellectual effort is more apparent than in Bach. I believe that Robert Browning's verdict on Shakespeare's amazing facility is applicable to Bach. Beethoven, with his sorrows, prayers, gaiety, and consolations urges you to endure the possibilities of passion and regret. Was Bach, the sedentary and solitary Bach, even more sensitive? Sensitive is not the word, possibly. "Sentient" is better. In a formula of pure pattern and ornament one becomes aware of a thousand exquisite things crumbling away like the glittering mist from a fountain. The Adagio of the D Major Concerto left me almost shattered as if I had been listening to the nerve-racking sounds of Wagner, in which physical strain counts for so much. Baudelaire compared Chopin's music to the flight of a glittering bird over an abyss. This summarizes the effect of a great deal of the finest music - the first movement, for instance, of Beethoven's great concerto for the violin.

[From: Self-Portrait taken from the letters & journals of Charles Ricketts, R.A. London, Peter Davies, 1939, p. 38].

45. Lux, Ars, Spes and Night

The first issue of the magazine Black and White was issued on February 6, 1891. The masthead for volume 1, number 1, was especially designed by Charles Ricketts and incorporated the words 'LUX' (as 'LVX'), 'ARS', 'SPES', and 'NIGHT'. The 'weekly illustrated record and review' carried this masthead for a short period only. It was not used after 13 June 1891.

Nameplate, designed by Charles Ricketts, for Black and white, 6 February 1891

The pen drawing, 90x232 mm was signed, lower left 'DEL C RICKETTS'. In advertisements (11 July and 7 November 1891) Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon were mentioned among the artists 'who have aided "Black & White" with brush, pen and pencil', which was true, as they had published a number of drawings in several issues.

For the advertisement leaves another illustration was in use from the beginning:

Nameplate for the advertisements in Black and white, 6 February 1891

This was not signed, and much more academic in style. After six months another masthead made its appearance on the opening page:

Nameplate for Black and white, 20 June 1891

In 1900 yet another masthead was in use:

Nameplate for Black and white, 7 July 1900

The later mastheads have a more restraint, businesslike character, while the first one, which was meant to disseminate the involvement with art work, was done in Ricketts's early drawing style, with crowded images and complex symbolism, filled to the brim with detail, figures and objects, while the lettering was placed a little too loosely, the individual letters sometimes being obscured by other parts of the drawing. The title Black and White did not stand out clearly, and obviously, the sales department did not approve.

44. Printed on Vale Press paper

The Vale Press was the first private press to dispose of its type by throwing the punches into the River Thames, an example that was followed a decade later by T.J. Cobden-Sanderson, and ultimately by Esther Pissarro (crossing the Channel). The lead of the type itself was too valuable to throw away, the types were melted down. The paper stock was another matter to deal with; apparently Ricketts sold the paper to James Guthrie of the Pear Tree Press, who used it for a few books and announcements. 

Colophon of L.V. Hodgkin, Holy poverty (Pear Tree Press, 1905)

One of these was a pamphlet by Lucy Violet Hodgkin (1869-1954), Holy poverty. The message of St. Francis for to-day, which was published at the Pear Tree Press in 1905. 

Title page of L.V. Hodgkin, Holy poverty (Pear Tree Press, 1905)

In The Vale Press. Charles Ricketts, a publisher in earnest, Maureen Watry writes (footnote 93) that Holy poverty, and an announcement for E.P.P. Macloghlin's Poetry (1905) were printed on Vale Press paper bearing the watermark of the mermaid, a paper Ricketts had designed for his Shakespeare edition. Macloghlin's book of poetry was printed on paper bearing the Vale Press watermark. The copy I have seen of Poetry was indeed printed on that paper. However, a copy of Holy poverty that came to my notice was not printed on mermaid paper, but on Unbleached Arnold paper with the Vale Press watermark. Guthrie may have printed the edition on a variety of papers, of course; please mail me the Vale watermarks you find in your copies of Pear Tree publications.

Unbleached Arnold paper with the Vale Press watermark in Holy poverty (Pear Tree Press, 1905)

43. Rik was talked off his feet by Ricketts

In 1996 an exhibition in the Museum Meermanno in The Hague commemorated  the foundation of The Vale Press in 1896. During preparations it came to light that the Dutch libraries together did not possess a complete collection of the ninety volumes of the press, however, several public collections contained a small representative group of Vale Press books, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National library of the Netherlands being one of them. The national library acquired the books in three batches, in 1900, in 1954, and in 1988.

In 1988 a few books were added to the collection as a longstanding loan from the Dutch Museum for Literature. These books came from the bequest of the poet Adriaan Roland Holst, a nephew of the artist and book designer Richard (Rik) Roland Holst (1868-1938), who visited London in 1893 to meet William Morris and Walter Crane. He became best of friends with Ricketts.

Richard Roland Holst and his wife Henriette van der Schalk (cover for Het boek van de Buissche Heide, 2012)

He wrote a long letter about Ricketts and Shannon to his fiancée, Henriette van der Schalk, misspelling the name of his new hero: 'Rickets talks you off your feet, he keeps on talking, without talking nonsense, very intense and excited, never jumpy, giving a broad perspective, you can feel that he has seen a lot, and  knows everything'. He thought him a brilliant man, whose work was 'deep, ingenious, full of fantasy, with a purity of rich feeling'; all features of art he was striving for himself. He admired Ricketts, for although Roland Holst was only two years younger than Ricketts, the latter had achieved far more: he founded his own magazine The dial, and he designed the covers for books of Oscar Wilde and Thomas Hardy. Ricketts had designed the binding and typography of John Gray's Silverpoints, of which Roland Holst owned copy number 111, and Ricketts and Shannon had worked a year on their latest publication, Daphnis and Chloe. When Rik Roland Holst visited their home in The Vale, Ricketts and Shannon were working on the wood-engravings for Hero and Leander.

The first Vale Press book, Milton's Early poems (1896), was acquired by the national library during the Winter of 1900. The work of Ricketts and Shannon had been exhibited in the Netherlands as early as 1892, and private collectors had been more attentive. J. Visser of Rotterdam had corresponded with Ricketts, and had been buying books since 1897. After the Vale Press suffered from a devastating fire at the printer's, the library bought a few books, such as Michael Field's The world at auction (1898), Ricketts's A defence of the revival of printing (1899) and The Rowley poems of Thomas Chatterton (1898). They arrived in November and December 1900, and were acquired directly from the shop of Hacon and Ricketts.

The Chatterton edition is remarkable, as it is one of only a few sets in the so-called flame binding, of which the pattern of flames and orange dots was a memento of the fire in which many wood blocks and unbound copies had been lost. The Vale Press stated that only three copies of the Chatterton had survived, but, as there are copies at The Houghton Library, at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, and at least three copies are known to be in private collections, more than three copies must have been found among the debris.

In 1954 the Koninklijke Bibliotheek again acquired two Ricketts items, the first of which was Beyond the threshold (1929), which was bought for its binding. The same goes for the edition of the Lyric poems of Tennyson, which was bound in red morocco by Zaehnsdorf, and acquired through the antiquarian firm of Frank Hammond. This book is one of only ten copies on vellum.

A vellum copy of Alfred Tennyson, Lyric poems (Vale Press, 1900) [© Photo: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National library of the Netherlands/Jos Uljee, 2010]

Rik's nephew, the poet Adriaan Roland Holst - who owned a not well-cared for copy of Daphnis and Chloe - went to meet Ricketts in 1920, and after the visit Ricketts wrote to his old friend: 'I liked your Nephew, he seemed bright, pleasant, manly, and pleasant to talk to.'

[A longer version of this blog was published in Dutch as: 'Ricketts praat je omver', in: KB Centraal, 30 (2001) 2 (March), p. 5-6.]

42. Patterned papers (f: Pine-cone and leaf)

The Vale Press programme of early English text editions included The sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney, which had been in preparation since 1896 before it was announced for October 1897; the book finally appeared in March 1898. The description of the cover paper in Ricketts's bibliography reads: 'pine-cone and leaf'. The probably stylized, fan-shaped leaf form may have been derived from the gingko tree.

Cover for The sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney (1898)

Originally, as can be read in the Michael Field journals (21 April 1898), the Sidney edition should have had a cover paper with primroses, but, due to a strike at the printers the publication scheme was adapted, and Ricketts used the paper of pine-cones which he had intended for Michael Field's next book. The Fields wrote: 'poor Sidney who had never anything to do with the Bacchic spirit'. Ricketts used an image of the Greek symbol for Bacchic rituals, a thyrsus topped with a pine-cone, on the border page of their book, The world at auction (1898).

Thyrsus topped with a pine-cone in the border, designed by Charles Ricketts for Michael Field, The world at auction (1898)

The cover design for The sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney has minor irregularities: some of the leaves have ten, others have eleven or twelve veins, while there are also many leaves that have thirteen veins that arise from the bottom of the blade and fan out to the rim. Horizontal and vertical lines are visible in the design, and the basic form of the design for the paper cover consists of eight leaves and eight pine-cones.

Detail of cover paper for The sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney (1898): a horizontal line is visible in the pattern

The design has been printed in green on a buff coloured paper, which is pasted on to the brown cardboard covers. The border of this book incorporates leaves of laurel.

Detail of cover paper for The sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney (1898)

41. Lot sold

The library of Jacques Levy, which was on sale at Sotheby's, New York, on 20 April, had some surprises in store for us. The special copy of Daphnis and Chloe sold for 8.780 US$, while the exceptional copy of The importance of being earnest - one of only twelve copies on Japanese paper, bound in full vellum, with the author's dedication to Robert Ross - sold for the amount of 362.500 US$ (hammer price with buyer's premium).

Should we see this as reasonable prices for books, while a pastel by Munch, one of four known 'Scream' images, changed hands for more than a hundred million?

I would love to see a picture of the bookcase, now containing the Jacques Levy copies of Ricketts's books, on Bookshelf Porn - or on this blog.

Detail of Charles Ricketts, woodcut,  'Love in the snow' (from Daphnis and Chloe, 1893, p. 61)

40. Charles Ricketts's articles in The Burlington magazine

This blog is an addendum to blog 39 and has been contributed by Barbara Pezzini:

List of articles by Charles Ricketts in The Burlington magazine
By Barbara Pezzini (edited by PvC)

1. C.R., [Review of: Velasquez. By Wilfred Wilberforce and A.R. Gilbert], in: The Burlington magazine, vol. 5, no. 15 (June 1904), p. 322.
2. Charles Ricketts, 'The masterpieces by Velazquez in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna', in: The Burlington magazine, vol. 5, no. 16 (July 1904), p. 338-341, 343, 345, 347.
3. Charles Ricketts, 'Fantin-Latour', in: The Burlington magazine, vol. 6, no. 19 (October 1904), p. 17-18. [Obituary.]
4. C. Ricketts, [Review of: Rubens. By Max Rooses], in: The Burlington magazine, vol. 6, no. 22 (January 1905), p. 330-331.
5. Charles Ricketts, 'Watts at Burlington House', in: The Burlington magazine, vol. 6, no. 23 (February 1905), p. 346-350.
6. C.R., [Review of: The Dürer Society. Seventh series], in: The Burlington magazine, vol. 6, no. 24 (March 1905), p. 502-503.
7. Charles Ricketts, 'The portrait of Isabella Brant in the Hermitage', in: The Burlington magazine, vol. 7, no. 25 (April 1905), p. 83-84. [Letter to the editor.]
8. Charles Ricketts, 'Constantin Meunier', 'II, His aim and place in the art of the nineteenth century', in: The magazine of art, vol. 7, no. 27 (June 1905), p. 181-182, 186-187. [Part I was written by R. Petrucci.]
9. Charles Ricketts, 'Dalou', in: The magazine of art, vol. 7, no. 29 (August 1905), p. 348, 353-354.
10. C.R., [Review of: Pisanello. By G.F. Hill], in: The Burlington magazine, vol. 8, no. 32 (November 1905), p. 141-142.
11. C.R., [Review of: Giotto. By Basil de Selincourt], in: The Burlington magazine, vol. 8, no. 32 (November 1905), p. 142-143.
12. C.R., [Review of: Dürer Society. Eight Series], in: The Burlington magazine, vol. 8, no. 35 (February 1906), p. 362.
13. Charles Ricketts, 'Adolph von Menzel', in: The Burlington magazine, vol. 9, no. 37 (April 1906), p. 51-52. [Review of: Adolph von Menzel. Abbildungen seiner Gemälde und Studien].
14. C. Ricketts, 'Early German art at the Burlington Fine Arts Club': 'III, Dürer and his successors', in: The Burlington magazine, vol. 9, no. 40 (July 1906), p. 264-267-268. [Part I was written by Lionel Cust; part II was written by Aymer Vallance.] [Exhibition review.]
15. C. Ricketts, [Letter on an attribution to Hubert van Eyck:  Pictures in the collection of Mr. John G. Johnson, of Philadelphia], in: The Burlington magazine, vol. 9, no. 42 (September 1906), p. 426. [Preceded by a letter from Herbert P. Horne.]
16. C.R. [Review of: Oxford Union Society. The story of the painting of the pictures on the walls, and the decorations on the ceiling of the old Debating Hall, Oxford. By Holman Hunt], in: The Burlington magazine, vol. 10, no. 46 (January 1907), p. 262-263.
17. Charles Ricketts, 'Puvis de Chavannes: a chapter from 'Modern painters', in: The Burlington magazine, vol. 13, no. 61 (April 1908), p. 9-12, 17-18.
18. Charles Ricketts, 'The Franco-British exhibition', 'The French section', in: The Burlington magazine, vol. 13, no. 64 (July 1908), p. 192-195. [Followed by 'The British section', written by Robert Ross.] [Exhibition review.]
19. C.R., [Review of: Auguste Rodin, l'oeuvre et l'homme. Par Judith Cladel], in: The Burlingtin magazine, vol. 14, no. 72 (March 1909), p. 368-369.
20. Charles Ricketts, 'In memory of Charles Conder', in: The Burlington magazine, vol. 15, no. 73 (April 1909), p. 8, 13-14.

Ricketts published 9 book reviews, 2 exhibition reviews, 5 articles, 2 letters and 2 obituaries in The Burlington magazine, of which only seven were published again in Pages on art (1913): he revised his obituaries of Fantin-Latour and Conder (p. 89-94 and p. 1-14) and his articles about Watts (p. 95-113), Meunier (p. 115-124), Dalou (p. 125-135) and Puvis de Chavannes (p. 55-79). In his first volume of art criticism he also included slightly rewritten versions of the Von Menzel and Rodin reviews (p. 137-145 and p. 83-88). However, thirteen of his contributions to The Burlington magazine were not published again by Ricketts.

39. Charles Ricketts and The Burlington magazine

This week's contribution to the blog has been written by Barbara Pezzini, index editor of The Burlington magazine.

Charles Ricketts and The Burlington magazine

Between 1904 and 1909 Charles Ricketts wrote twenty articles for The Burlington magazine, starting in June 1904 with a brief, dismissive review of a book on Velazquez by W. Wilberforce and A.R. Gilbert, to conclude in 1909 with a long eulogy in memory of his recently deceased friend, the painter Charles Conder. These two pieces are representative of Ricketts's writings for the Burlington, which span between old-masters and modern art and endeavour to construct a dialogue between them. Ricketts was interested in and equally able to engage with artists as diverse as Dalou, Pisanello, Conder, Meunier and Velàzquez. A successful painter himself who collected and studied ancient art, Ricketts's passion for old-masters paintings and his preference for a style of art which still followed the ancient figurative canon has been so far interpreted as a late product of a Victorian Aestheticism - Ricketts himself described his works as by 'an undiscovered master of the nineteenth century' (*).

But there are more timely aspects in Ricketts's writing and the fact that he chose to contribute to The Burlington magazine is significant, as this newly founded journal had a novel approach, for Britain, to art history. Since its first issue in March 1903, the Burlington proclaimed its interest for ancient art and the most current subjects of art historical debate: Italian and Northern European art, especially the late medieval and early Renaissance artists then known as 'primitives'. The Burlington introduced document-based, historicist art writing indebted to formalist 'new criticism', German scholarship and Morellian connoisseurship.

This was based on the works of the Italian scholar Giovanni Morelli who had developed a 'system' to identify the authors of works of art based on the analysis of small pictorial details such as nails, ears or folds in the drapery. The focus in the Burlington was to reconsider artists, such as Leonardo and Botticelli, treated as emotional cult figures by the poetic criticism of the aestheticist movement, with a new formalist and documentary methodology and taking full advantage of the new comparative possibilities offered by photographic reproductions of works of art. For Ricketts, the main method of study of ancient art was a detailed formal analysis which would lead to its attribution. In a letter of September 1906 (The Burlington magazine, September 1906, p. 426) Ricketts recurs to the very contemporary vocabulary of Morellian analysis to confute an attribution to Hubert van Eyck as he invites the viewer to examine 'the hands, the feet, the folds of the drapery' of this painting (Stigmatization of Saint Francis, now attributed to Jan van Eyck).

'Stigmatization of Saint Francis', photograph as published in The Burlington magazine (work now attributed to Jan van Eyck, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

This philological approach found its parallel in contemporary art practice: there was a similar interest in renewing art through the investigation of its primary sources and the rediscovery of long lost techniques, as expressed in the work of Christiana Herringham, her translation of Cennino Cennini and her revival of the ancient technique of tempera. Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon too had similar aims in their revival of painting. Likewise, in Ricketts's writings on contemporary art modern masters were inserted in a chronological formalist reading of art history and compared to ancient artists.

For instance, the sculptor Constantin Meunier is seen as similar to those 'sober craftsmen who carved the Labours and the Months in Gothic cathedrals' and carrying the same 'male energies as Donatello' (The Burlington magazine, June 1905, p. 182). A similar need to understand the formal components and subjects of ancient art and transform them in a contemporary emotional statement can be seen in his series of the passion of Christ of 1902-1905. In his 'Descent from the Cross', the colouring, foreshortening and grouping recall clearly Italian Venetian art, but the lack of eye contact, absence of facial expression, the highly idealised, gloomy landscape create an atmosphere of reverie closer to early twentieth-century sensibility.

Charles Ricketts, 'Descent from the Cross' (William Morris Gallery, London) (another work of this series in The Tate, London)

Ricketts ceased to write for the Burlington following his disagreement with Roger Fry, one of the magazine's most influential founders, when Fry assumed the joint editorship of the magazine with Lionel Cust in 1909. As Fry wrote to R.C. Trevelyan: 'Ricketts has resigned from the Burlington Consulting Committee because I am editor! Isn't he funny? I hope I may persuade him to relent; not that he is important but I have a foolish liking for him' (**)

Famously Kenneth Clark had described Fry and Ricketts as critics belonging to two opposite schools (***), but for a few years shortly after 1900 Fry and Ricketts had much in common and were active in the same milieu. They exhibited their work in the same gallery, Carfax and Co., wrote for the same journal, The Burlington magazine, and their writings on art had much in common too. Fry and Ricketts both favoured the period between 1400 and 1700, Italian art in particular, and both had an understanding of the importance of the art of the past for the present, that Ricketts poetically defined as 'nothing beautiful and welcome in human endeavour is without ascendancy in the best of our experience, which we call the art of the past' (The Burlington magazine, April 1909, p. 8).

This common ground was to find a fraction since Fry had embraced the art of Cézanne and Post-Impressionism, favouring a visual vocabulary of formal primitivism that still recourred to ancient art but avoided the old-master inspired subjects, composition and subtle tonal colourism still preferred by Ricketts. Fry's support for Cézanne was 'The last straw', Ricketts wrote: 'There are frigid forms of mental prostitution which no lover of the old masters and fine moderns ought to abide' (****). Ricketts was never to write for the Burlington again.
(*) J.G.P. Delaney, Charles Ricketts. A biography. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990, p. 142-143.
(**) Letters of Roger Fry. Denys Sutton (Ed.). London,  Chatto and Windus, 1972, vol. 1, p. 309.
(***) Kenneth Clark, 'Foreword', in: Stephen Calloway, Charles Ricketts. Subtle and fantastic decorator. London, Thames and Hudson, 1979, p. 6.
(****) Delaney, p. 246 (letter to Sidney Cockerell, 6 January 1910).

A list of articles and letters by Ricketts in The Burlington magazine, compiled by Barbara Pezzini, will be published in next week's blog.
See also the website of The Burlington magazine.

38. Those vanished hours of the rich Vale

The poet Gordon Bottomley (1874-1948) admired Ricketts and Shannon and collected their works, which he donated to the Tullie House Museum & Art Gallery in Carlisle. He  dedicated one of his plays (Gruach) to Ricketts and Shannon and reprinted the dedicatory poem in a collection, Poems of thirty years (1925).

Earlier, Bottomley had written four poems 'after the design of Mr. C.H. Shannon, R.A.'. This referred to a lithograph, 'The white watch' (1894) that was listed by Ricketts in his Catalogue of Mr. Shannon's lithographs as number 27: 'Two girls sleep side by side lit by splashes of moonlight falling from a casement outside the picture. On the right a third girl in her night-shift looks out into the night. A small lantern is fastened to her wrist.'

Charles Shannon, 'The white watch', lithograph, 1894

The first two poems with the title 'The white watch' were published in Bottomley's book The gate of Smaragdus (1904), p. xii-xiii and p. lx-lxi. Only the first one was reprinted in his Poems of thirty years, with an additional sub-title, 'Opus Juvenis' (p. 47-50); the first line is: 'I do not know how I came here'. It was undated in The gate of Smaragdus, but dated in Poems: 1900. The second poem in The gate of Smaragdus is sub-titled 'Op. 24, No. 3' and here the first line reads: 'The lonely house was down large trees'. Three women are described:

They brooded many a faint design
Charles Shannon some day will divine
to paint if he lives long enough.

In Chambers of imagery (1907) Bottomley published two further poems with the same title. The first one (p. 14-18), sub-titled 'Opus 28. No. 3', began with the words: 'Apple boughs lie in the eaves'. It was reprinted in Poems (p. 41-44) and there dated: 1904. The last poem in this series had yet another sub-title, 'Opus 27. No. 2' (p. 31-33) and the opening line read: 'O lifeless garden of the moon'. It was reprinted in Poems (p. 45-47), also dated 1904. The opus numbers probably refer to the music of Frédéric Chopin.

Bottomley's play Gruach was dedicated to Ricketts and Shannon, and published in 1921, together with Britain's daughter. Paul Delaney pointed out that Ricketts asked Bottomley to use only initials ('To C.H.S. and C.S.R.'), 'so that the dedication would be obvious only to the initiated'. In the dedicatory poem, dated, 'August 16th, 1919', Bottomley remembered his visits to the artists in their house in The Vale, Chelsea, where he found 'assurance that romance is wisdom and truth'. The modern reader of Bottomley's poems will have to conjure up the patience, as the poet is slow in coming to the point. In the fourth part of his long poem, he expresses what he expects from art, and what he learned from Ricketts and Shannon, and in the fifth part he expresses his friendship and remembers the mutual friends from the 'Paragon' (Michael Field).

To C.H.S. and C.S.R.

Now, when my life is more than half consumed,
And my yet steady flame gathers its force
More to aspire before the vague, last flare
(That lightens nothing) gutters in the night-wind,
Upon the midway ridge of my short days
I turn; I would not know what is to come,
Down the far slope of the withdrawing wave;
I would remain at this conspiring height,
Whose upward motion seemed my own, and keep,
Keep mine the swift doscoveries of life,
The passionate, the unexpected moments
That now, as I look back, are all I have,
And I have longed for, all I have to lose,
All, all I shall regret when I must leave them.

And first, after the daily use of love
That is not to be told, the common joy
Of life shared with the natural, earth-born forces,
I think of him who from Italian seed
Was born an English man, him who renewed
By moody English ways, at English tension,
For English unilluminated hearts like mine,
The lost Italian vision, the passionate
Vitality of art more rich than life,
More real than the day's reality.
Before I knew his name and his great acts
Of true creation done on God's behalf,
Within himself the assurance of a God,
I lived in the stale darkness of my kind;
And it was his sole deed that I have known
The power of loveliness, the power of truth,
And of imagination that concentres
Life into more than one life ever gave.
By nameless lovers, lovers with great names,
By fabulous ladies dreamed and almost seen,
By Dante's lost love Beatrice and his own
More wonderful and more desireable
Lost love Elizabeth, created once
For him, and once by him in recollection;
And by his rarer light; I learned to live.

The first amazement as of a spirit seen,
When in the arts that man has perfected
Beauty is known, is not maintained. The past
Must be resumed in each of us, to each
Deliver its attainment and its hope;
But every man to his own generation
Nearer approaches than to father or child,
And apprehends more intimately by it
The reality of vision and life; and it
More certainly divines the truth of him:
And so, when I had turned the last bright page
Of that dead painter of a keener life,
And felt that the dark mirror of his vision
Was broken, and knew I should not see again
Any new shape of that mysterious beauty
(Which by a heart-ache still brings back my youth),
I kindled with more life because I came
Of the same miracle of enhanced life
Continued and renewed in acts of yours.

Upon the Dial of the vanished Vale
Were counted chosen fortunate hours alone;
And there began the invention and the mood
That by the shapes of colour and air and light
Has made a life men might begin to-day,
yet fit for a lovelier earth that is to be,
Out of the England that is here and now -
A region better than dreams, a drawn-lit state,
Wherein the daily Greece Theocritus
Through his half-open door in the same way
Shews us is mingled with succeeding life,
Siena, Avalon, and the Western place
Where Deirdre learned to move and look at men,
And with the garden of living ladies where
A silvery bearer of a cyclamen
Looked at her painter and shall be remembered
With the Gioconda; and in this state I found
Assurance that romance is wisdom and truth.
And in those vanished hours of the rich Vale
One in whose birth England and Italy
A second time had kissed was also known;
One who received my first enchanter's force
Of vision to create a keener life;
In whom the knowledge of materials
Leads to design as form leads into colour.
Wherever human days and acts have burned
By breeding and great race to salient height
Of suffering or rapture or quivering
Domination they are subject to his mind:
He has made manisfest the shape of Silence:
By beings that never were, centaur and sphinx,
He has made clear the composition of life,
The nature of vitality: and by him
I have understood that I desire from art
And from creation not repeated things
Of every day, not the mean content
Or discontentof average helpless souls,
Not passionate abstraction of loveliness,
But unmatched moments and exceptional deeds
And all that cannot happen every day
And rare experience of earth's chosen men
In which I cannot, by my intermitting
And narrow powers, share unless they are held
Sublimated and embodied in beauty.

Dear Masters, in the acknowledgement of debt
There may be grace; but not enough for payment.
I write your names before this meditation
On an old theme, a birthright of our race,
Because I have put theirin all that is mine;
And so I give it to you, as I would give
All that is mine to you, recognisance
Of what I owe and have no means to pay.
You love the arts so well that you preserve,
Within your treasure-house that seems to rise
In clarity and in tranquillity
Above the impermanence of time, true works
That still are less than those you do yourselves:
Content me by receiving this among them
For your own sake and that of certain dead -
And, most for the two friends of Paragon
Who sought perfection and achieved far more;
And by my poem's admittance recognise
The duty that I offer, I too your friend.

37. Patterned papers (e: A flowered paper)

Literature, in its 30 October 1897 issue, listed as a recent publication a new edition of the Vale Press: Henry Constable's Poems and sonnets. A later review (15 January 1898) mentioned the annotations to the text, which was edited by John Gray, as correct and austere. Type and paper were also mentioned, but, obviously, the editors of the academic journal thought these details of printing beneath them: 'We do not know whether it would be correct to say that it is printed in black letter; at any rate it is black lettery. The paper is rough and tough, a papier de luxe; and you might think from the look of the page that you were reading an old volume that had been sent to Messrs. Pullar and subjected to some cleansing process.' The reference is to Pullar's Dye Works in Perth.

The border for the first text page was later the subject of some comments, but the patterned paper for the cover was largely ignored. Charles Ricketts, who designed it, mentioned it in his Bibliography of the Vale Press: 'Bound in a flowered paper'.

Cover paper for Henry Constable, Poems and sonnets, designed by Charles Ricketts (1897)

It seems to be a repetitive design of a leaf and an acorn connected by a twisted curled stem, but a closer look reveals that the pattern is irregular, and although the small acorn device can usually be found at the lower part of a curl, in some places it has been omitted. 

Detail of cover paper for Henry Constable, Poems and sonnets (1897): the acorn in row 3, left, is omitted.

 In some parts of the design, there was hardly enough room for the acorns, and instead of being positioned at the bottom of the curly stem, they were placed to the left of the curl (see the image), again omitting one acorn due to lack of space.

Detail of cover paper for Henry Constable, Poems and sonnets (1897): the acorns in the upper row are placed to the left of the curved stem, or omitted; in the lower row they are placed at the lower end of the curve.

These tiny details (the image above is of an area of 50x20 mm) are responsible for the liveliness and individuality of the patterned paper; all rows - horizontally and diagonally - contain deviations and are not the straight lines they at first may appear to be. This can be seen in the light of the Arts and Crafts Movement's inclination for hand-crafted books, as opposed to the industrial production processes. Ricketts, however, used modern techniques whenever he thought them fit, as in this case: the design for the cover paper was first engraved in wood and then cast as an electrotype.

36. An artists' presentation copy

Some private collectors are open about their purchases, others not. Some have lended their most exclusive books for exhibitions, others keep them in a room, which even their intimates (if any) are forbidden to enter. There are collectors who have become famous during their life time, others disappear without a trace.

In New York, Sotheby's will sell the library of Jacques Levy on 20 April. The catalogue explains that this will be the first time that the collection can be seen by the public. Levy died more than 30 years ago, in 1980. He was born in Istanbul in 1905 - he shared the dates but possibly not the ideas of Jean-Paul Sartre.

Levy was 'educated in French schools', lived in New York, but travelled in Europe and South America. His eclectic collection was started in the 1940s. In 1948, for example, he acquired a copy of Oscar Wilde's The importance of being Earnest; this was one of only twelve copies on Japanese paper, bound in full vellum, with the author's dedication to Robert Ross.

Longus, Daphnis and Chloe, illustrated by Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon. London, The Bodley Head, 1893, p. 60-61.

Somewhere along the line he acquired an extraordinary copy of Ricketts' and Shannon's early masterpiece, Daphnis and Chloe, which was published for the artists by Mathews and Lane at the Bodley Head in June 1893. There are a few copies, in which Thomas Sturge Moore later ascribed the design of the individual wood-engravings to either Ricketts or Shannon. The Levy copy also has marginal pencilled notes to identify the artists, who divided between them the design of the illustrations, which were subsequently drawn on the wood by Ricketts and cut by Shannon. It took them about eleven months to finish the job.

The Levy copy has some unique selling points: the book is accompanied by a set of 27 proof impressions of the wood-engravings (on 26 sheets), 14 are signed by Ricketts, 10 by Shannon, and 2 sheets are signed 'C.H. Shannon & CR'. The provenance of this copy is known, as it was once owned by the New York banker and collector Joseph Manuel Andreini (1850-1932). Andreini was a member of the Grolier and Rowfant Clubs and one of his bookplates was designed by Lucien Pissarro whose Eragny Press books he bought at the time they appeared. He also collected Vale Press books, such as the volumes containing Chatterton's poems and Tennyson's lyric poems.

Before Andreini took hold of the copy, however, it was given by the artists to one of their publishers, (Charles) Elkin Mathews (1851-1921). The Levy copy has been inscribed on the front free endpaper by Shannon: 'To C Elkin Mathews May 19th 1893', and the inscription is also signed by Ricketts. Sturge Moore (to whom the book had been dedicated) also signed this copy. The dedication is dated almost three weeks prior to the publication date.

Who will be the next owner?

35. To V.F. from C.R.

Earlier this month, Paul Rassam sent us a pre-publication copy of his new catalogue 25: Late 19th & 20th century literature. Number 127 in this catalogue describes a copy of Lord de Tabley's Poems, dramatic & lyrical (1893) with a late dedication 'To V.F. from C.R., 1919'. The recipient's bookplate helps to identify 'V.F.' as Vivian Forbes (1891-1937).

Cover for Lord de Tabley, Poems, dramatic & lyrical (1893), designed by Charles Ricketts

Forbes was a young painter who, in 1915, had met his future lover, the painter Glyn Philpot (1884-1937), with whom he had a troublesome relation that ended when Philpot died in 1937 and Forbes, who depended on him for moral and financial support, killed himself. 

Plaque at Lansdowne House, erected by Greater London Council, 1979

Philpot's work was influenced by that of Ricketts and Shannon, and when the two older artists left Lansdowne House for Townshend House, Forbes and Philpot moved into their former flats and studios. Although Ricketts & Shannon and Forbes & Philpot knew each other, they never became close friends. They probably met in about 1918, and Ricketts took a liking for the lesser talented Forbes, about whom he wrote to Gordon Bottomley, 29 May 1919: 'The war caught him when hardly a man, and he is seeing Russian ballets, National Gallery pictures, and hearing Wagner or Chopin as novelties'. To Thomas Lowinsky, he had written, December 1918: 'We have taken a great liking to Forbes, the sensual beast who ate my strawberries at Chilham'. Ricketts and Shannon had a country retreat, the Keep of Chilham Castle in Kent, which had been purchased by their friend Edmund Davis. (*) The dedication by Ricketts in a copy of Lord de Tabley's book dates from these years of admiration for the young painter. It was offered by Paul Rassam in the Summer of 2011 at the Olympia Fair in London, the price has now been reduced to £650.


Dedication from Charles Ricketts to Marcus Behmer in Lord de Tabley's Poems, dramatic & lyrical (private collection)

Another dedication copy of the same book has no date in it, but mentions the full name of the recipient, another young artist: 'To Marcus Behmer, from his friend, Charles Ricketts'. Marcus Behmer was an admirer from Germany, who had lived in Paris and may have met Ricketts before the First World War. He wrote about Ricketts's designs for the Vale Press on several occasions.

Ricketts's dedications are usually as short as these two, omitting dates, or reducing names to initials. Longer and intimate dedications are rare.

(*) Paul Delaney, Charles Ricketts. A biography. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990, p. 314. Self-portrait taken from the letters & journals of Charles Ricketts, RA. London, Peter Davies, 1939, p. 308. See also: J.G.P. Delaney, Glyn Philpot. His life and art. Aldershot, Ashgate, 1999, plate 8, for a portrait of Vivian Forbes painted by Glyn Philpot.

34. An original print

On 18 March, 1937 - 75 years ago - Charles Shannon died. Next week, an exhibition on printmaking 1893-1895 will include a lithograph by Shannon at the Minneapolis Institute of Art exhibition about L'estampe originale. Shannon's contribution to this important series of original prints was a lithograph of a woman and cats, 'La femme aux chats', also called 'La Biondina'. This lithograph was described in Ricketts's Vale Press Catalogue of Mr. Shannon's lithographs (1902) as number 24: 'Biondina. A replica of No. 3 in reverse, more forcible, however in effect and execution. About fifty proofs exists'.


Charles Shannon, 'Biondina', lithograph (1894)

Lithograph number 3 was printed in 1890 in an edition of 12 copies. It was called 'The fantastic dress': 'a woman in a wide skirt moves to the left towards a mirror. In the foreground is the indication of a sofa on which are two cats'. The lithograph was later, in 1893, published in a small series, called Early lithographs, of which only 8 copies were for sale.

Ricketts's contribution to the same issue of L'estampe originale (album VII) was a woodcut, which was not well received: the wood engraving (89 x 94 mm) was printed in black on Japan paper (197 x 240 mm) and mounted on a larger sheet (433 x 596 mm). It was signed in pencil, lower right: C Ricketts. A blindstamp designed by Alexandra Charpentier for L’Estampe originale was embossed on the bottom left of the mounting sheet. Ricketts depicted a loggia to the left with a group of people, and to the right is a dragon on the roof. This engraving is known in France as 'Inondation', and in Great Britain as 'Deluge'.

Charles Ricketts, 'Inondation', or, 'Deluge', wood-engraving (1893)

The exhibition in Minneapolis will be on show from Saturday, March 24, 2012 to Sunday, December 9, 2012.