221. Charles Ricketts and Oscar Wilde's Woman's World (1)

PhD candidate Petra Clark (University of Delaware) recently published an article in the September issue of the Journal of Victorian Culture: '"Cleverly Drawn": Oscar Wilde, Charles Ricketts, and the Art of the Woman's World'. It was accompanied by a blogpost on the Journal of Victorian Culture Online from where the article can be downloaded.

The Woman’s World (1887-1890) was the successor of The Lady's World; Wilde was asked to become its editor, and subsequently suggested some changes such as a new title. Wilde did not write many pieces for the magazine himself, his job was to solicit new texts. 

Petra Clark argues that Charles Ricketts approached Wilde while he was editor of the magazine in order to get commissions for drawings, and that his early drawings for this magazine quickly became more than 'hackwork', as he introduced new art nouveau styled elements that transcended the message his illustrations were supposed to convey to the readers. Ricketts got some orders for large format drawings that fitted his growing specialism: costume, especially Elizabethan dresses and surroundings.

Charles Ricketts, header for 'The Latest Fashion' (The Woman's World, December 1889)

Petra Clark writes: 

Despite their subjects being dictated by the articles for which they were commissioned, many of Ricketts’s illustrations are nonetheless highly personalized, even going so far as to suggest his relationship with other artists.

One such interaction that particularly stood out was Ricketts’s with Gustave Fraipont. Fraipont was a Belgian-born French artist who contributed illustrations to a number of magazines during this period, and created many headers for the Woman’s World over the course of its run, particularly for the 'The Latest Fashions' and 'Paris Fashions' sections of each monthly instalment. Fraipont’s header designs for earlier issues emphasized feminine accessories such as fans, lace, powder puffs, and ribbons. At some point during 1889, Ricketts seems to have been given the 'The Latest Fashions' headers to do, which is where things get interesting. Ricketts too draws the same sort of items as Fraipont, but adds in mischievous putti who gambol across the header and, more often than not, disrupt the order of the toilette with their own uses for these items.
Such plump imps were a common element in Renaissance and Baroque art, so employed here, they at once invoke high art as well as the sentimental, while undermining both. It is unclear whether Ricketts was mocking such figures that may have appeared in pre-existing designs by Fraipont, or if he just found the putti a convenient vehicle to playfully engage with the work of the older artist. In any case, Fraipont’s subsequent headers for 'Paris Fashions' began to feature his own putti, though it is likewise difficult to know why: possibly he decided to fight putti with putti, or he recognized the appeal of Ricketts’s designs and sought to assimilate them into his own. These dozen or so putti headers become more and more ridiculous as each artist took his turn, finally reaching a fever-pitch of absurdity and excess before dying down.

Next week I will publish some footnotes to this article, commenting upon the way these early commissions for The Woman's World came about, and how the relationship between the firm of Cassell, the publisher of The Woman's World, and the artist Ricketts evolved, and how Oscar Wilde as an editor may have played a role.

The problem of each article on Ricketts's early works lies in the absence of archives (the Cassell archive was destroyed, no early letters between Ricketts and Wilde have survived), and therefore conjecture must be called in to fill in the gaps. Clark hands us some material to further our thoughts about Ricketts's early commissions, although I think that Wilde's role is needlessly overrated, and that we have to turn to our knowledge of the daily practice of running a magazine to get some answers. As I see it, there is no reason to assume that Ricketts had sent his drawings to Wilde.

220. Proctor, Ricketts, Morris, Pissarro, Cobden-Sanderson

Monomaniacal readers are of all times, and in the nineteenth century some of them ended up in a library. More than 120 years ago this happened to Robert Proctor (1868-1903), who became assistant in the British Library department of printed works. In this capacity he developed into an expert of incunabula and typefaces. From the type in a book, he could deduce in which city and in what year a book had been printed. Nowadays, scholars know that there is more to it, such as paper and the watermarks in the paper, but Proctor established a sort of standard, and reached international fame for his descriptions of the incunabula in the British Museum collection. He could not enjoy his new status for long; he was 35 when he disappeared during a walking tour in the Alps. 

A Critical Edition of the Private Diaries of Robert Proctor.
The Life of a Librarian at the British Museum (2010)

His diaries survived, and were published in 2010 (edited by J.H. Bowman, and published by the Edwin Mellen Press). The entries are rather short, and sometimes cryptic, basically describing the weather. One day it is sunny, another one it rains; and day after day, year after year the daily reports on clouds, showers, heat and fog can guarantee nothing else than tedious reading. However, his notes on the commuter's railway journeys to London acquired the dreariness of an obsolete mantra; he routinely wrote down at what time his train had departed and when exactly he changed trains, or arrived at a certain station, and what the weather was like over there - but with some patience, every now and then, one meets a remark that is noticeable.

Robert Proctor, diary note for 21 July 1903

His views on current matters in typography and the book arts are those of an impassioned scholar in his thirties, blunt, deeply felt, and totally black-and-white. He adored the work of William Morris, whose every piece of paper he ardently collected (not for the B.L., but for his private collection), paying barely affordable prices for books and pamphlets at auctions. He vehemently rejected the books of other private presses: Charles Ricketts and his Vale Press were only capable of muddling, and Lucien Pissarro's Eragny Press was even worse.

Robert Proctor, diary note for 22 July 1903

He loved Doves Press books, as they had been designed by his friend Emery Walker who had also been an important inspiration for Morris; however, the other Doves Press owner, Cobden Sanderson was rated a fool.

For now, I am not concerned with the accuracy of his findings; what is fascinating in his diaries, is the emotional power of his remarks on modern typography. His diary is one of the few sources for contemporary enthusiasm for William Morris and the Kelmscott Press expressed by a member of the younger generation. We know that Morris was revered by many, but seldom we hear the voice of the younger acolytes. The force of their adoration underlines the importance of the revival of printing that Morris brought about. 

Morris was dead by the time Proctor started his diaries in 1899, and he belonged to a past generation of Pre-Raphaelites, whose Arts and Crafts movement educated the audience's taste for a new approach to typography, forcing commercial publishers to adapt the style and the materials of their books; Morris's views eventually brought about major changes in book design, and resulted in graphic design as we know it today. 

Proctor's alacrity for every scrap of paper touched by Morris's ideas, and his zeal for a modern typography was important at the time, and can only be compared to the admiration of the earliest disciples of Steve Jobs, and the worship of Apple products. William Morris was the Steve Jobs of the nineteen-nineties.

This adoration for Morris played a distinctive part in the export of private press ideas to other countries. We can detect this early enthusiasm outside Great Britain, for example in the Netherlands, or in Belgium, where one of these early fans was the artist, architect and book designer Henry van de Velde. 

[Part of the Miraeus lecture, held at the Erfgoedbibliotheek Hendrik Conscience in Antwerp on 6 May 2015].

219. A Painting by Ricketts's Father

Charles Ricketts's father was a marine painter, Charles Robert Ricketts (1838-1883). His paintings occasionally come up for auction and fetch prices between a few hundred and something over a thousand euro's, dollars, or British pounds.

An auction of Fine Art & Antiques is to be held on 13 October. In it the Canterbury Auction Galleries offer for sale a painting by Ricketts's father, called 'The Hero of London' (lot 269). 

Robert Charles Ricketts, 'The Hero of London' 

The scene is of the ship 'Hero of London' that stranded on the Goodwin Sands off the Kent coast on 16th October 1872. The brig, built in 1822, had come from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, carrying coal, destined for Truro. The Walmer lifeboat 'Centurion' went to her aid. The crew could be rescued, but the vessel was wrecked.

The oil on canvas picture measures 76,2 by 127 cm, signed 'C.R.Ricketts', and dated 1872. It has been reframed in a modern gilt moulded frame. 

The painting has been on the market before. It was sold on 11 September 2007 by Bonhams in London (lot 97).

Note, 27 November 2015:
The painting will be on sale again at Canterbury Auction Galleries on 8 December 2015, now with an estimate of £750-£1000 (starting bid: £740).

Note, 4 February 2016:
The painting has come up for sale once again. This time Canterbury Auction Galleries mentions a starting bid of £600. The auction takes place on 16 February 2016.

218. Wilde & Mallarmé (and Ricketts) at auction

The private library of Stéphane Mallarmé will be auctioned in Paris by Sotheby's on 15 October 2015. The collection contains his own copies of Le Corbeau (1875) and L'Après-midi d'un faune (1876), both with illustrations by Édouard Manet, and many other singular books and manuscripts including the manuscript of Un Coup de Dés jamais n'abolira le Hasard.

There are also two autograph letters by Oscar Wilde to Stéphane Mallarmé, written in February and November 1891 (Sotheby's dates both letters February 1891).

Oscar Wilde, letters to Stéphane Mallarmé (1891)

Both letters have been published in Oscar Wilde, The Complete Letters (2000) [pages 471 and 492].

The description of the lot puts the later letter first (here dated mid February 1891). The letter accompanied a dedication copy of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray with a cover design by Charles Ricketts. The dedication in the novel reads: 'A Stéphane Mallarmé. Hommage d'Oscar Wilde, Paris '91'. The copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray is not included in the sale.

On 10 November Mallarmé responded to this letter, thanking Wilde for his gift. Wilde could not have written his letter in mid February, because the book appeared in April of that year.

In the second letter, in reality the earlier one, Wilde thanks Mallarmé for the gift of a copy of Mallarmé's translation of Poe's poem Le Corbeau. Like all Mallarmé disciples and admirers, Wilde calls him 'Maître', the poem is a 'magnifique symphonie en prose'. This letter is dated 25 February 1891.

Two letters about an exchange of books between two literary masters - the estimate for these exceptional pieces is €6000-8000.

[The lot was sold for €75.000.]

217. Charles Ricketts at the Curwen Press

An online bibliography, called Oliver Simon at the Curwen Press, contains information on three books with texts and/or illustrations by Ricketts: The Legion Book (1929), Beyond the Threshold (1929), and Troy (1928). The first two have bindings by Ricketts, the second one has texts by Ricketts, and the second and third title have illustrations by Ricketts.

Charles Ricketts, illustration for Troy (1928)

The bibliography by Robin Phillips has been in the making since 1963, so for more than fifty years. It contains descriptions of the books that were printed at the Curwen Press, Plaistow, London, between 1919 and 1955. During that period Oliver Simon was associated with the press. Phillips is adding new data regularly, and the descriptions contain information on author, title, format, size, typeface, paper, illustration methods.

Troy, a poem by Humbert Wolfe (1885-1940), was published as the twelfth publication in Faber & Gwyer's series The Ariel Poems. It appeared in a regular edition in September 1928 (legal deposit date 24 September); a limited edition of 500 copies signed by the author appeared in November.

Charles Ricketts, drawing for Troy (1928)

The print run of the ordinary edition is not mentioned in the bibliography, but must have been approximately 3000 copies. The poem was set in a 10 point Garamond italic (title and author's name in roman). The green outer wrapper was printed in black with the drawing of the Trojan horse. There were eight pages, sewn in the wrapper (145x122 mm).

The limited edition is bound in light blue wove paper covers, with the upper cover gold-blocked with author's name and title. Published in a larger format (219x143 mm), the booklet contained twelve pages (not including the endpapers). The Trojan horse appeared, not on its cover, but on page [3], printed in black on white. This edition was printed on English hand-made paper (there is no watermark).

Ricketts's second drawing was also a line-block, but printed in several colours: black, red, yellow, green, and blue. Some slight differences between the image in the two editions may have been the result of the softness of the deluxe paper, and of pressure.

The pattern in red has, in some copies, been placed somewhat to the left, causing the red strokes around the moon to intrude the black circle from the right; in other copies they pierce the moon circle from the left; or don't enter the circle at all. 

Another matter is the black in the woman's wrist. The seated woman with the naked back shows black ink in the copies of the deluxe edition, but not in the regular copies.

216. Oscar Wilde's Sphinx in Paris

The former director of the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Yves Peyré, has published a book about the bookbindings in the collection of this Parisian library, Histoire de la reliure de création (Éditions Faton, 2015).

Yves Peyré, Histroire de la reliure de création (2015)

When he was appointed director of the library, Peyré took note of the desiderata in its holdings. The historical collection was quite strong in bookbinding, but not in modern bookbindings. Peyré set out to collect modern French bookbindings from 1870 onwards, but, remarkably, he also acquired a more international collection of German, Dutch, Belgian, Danish, Italian and British bookbindings. 

Among the latter are copies of books printed and designed by Lucien and Esther Pissarro, books bound by T.J. Cobden Sanderson, William Morris, and Charles Ricketts, whose design for Oscar Wilde's The Sphinx is called 'le sommet de sa carrière de relieur'. The short paragraph on his work states that Ricketts had a preference for vellum bindings with designs in gold. He designed only a few of those, in fact, Ricketts fancied cloth bindings with blind embossed designs.

Oscar Wilde, The Sphinx (1893), designed by Charles Ricketts

The Bibliothèque Geneviève acquired a copy of The Sphinx in 2014. As a photograph shows, it is a far from immaculate copy. The spine is damaged, the covers are blemished and there are black stains, affecting the gold images. The catalogue description repeats an often made mistake: the initials 'LSH' on the back have been identified as 'Laurence Housman, interprète, Henry Leighton, relieur'. One often finds this double mistake in older antiquarian catalogues. 'LSH' stands for 'Leighton, Son, & Hodge', the London bookbinder's firm. The artist Housman, a good friend of Ricketts, had nothing to do with Ricketts's design. 

It is a pleasure to note that French libraries display an interest in the book arts of other countries, and that lavish catalogues including foreign books are being published. I hope the Geneviève library will continue this acquisition policy and affirm its resolution to expand the collection with an international focus.

215. An Attribution For Sale, and Sold

The auction of Fine Art, Antiques and Collectables by Gorringes in Lewis included a pastel and pencil drawing that was attributed to 'Charles Haslewood Shannon (1863-1937)'. The auction took place on 2 September. 

Attributed to Charles Shannon, Portrait of a girl

The attribution is based on 'the title on the mount', according to the catalogue description, but there is no title, only an inscription: 'Charles H. Shannon R.A.'

The framed drawing is a portrait of an anonymous girl. The title given by the auction house is 'Study of a girl'. Measurements are 13.5 x 10.75 inches, which must be the dimensions of the frame as the drawing has not been taken out of the frame to check the attribution, or the state of the drawing.

Estimated Price: £120 - £180. Sold for £120.

(Thanks to Steven Halliwell).

214. A Summer Miscellany: Choosing a Mask

The Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum in the Midlands owns a painting by Charles Shannon, a portrait of Ricketts: 'The Man with the Greek Vase' (1916), formerly in the collection of Mrs. Edmund Davis. 

The museum's collection also holds another painting that was given in 1954. This is not a well-known painting, and probably an early one, by Charles Ricketts. This is called 'Choosing a Mask'. It was bequeathed to the museum in 1954 by Cecil French.

Charles Ricketts, 'Choosing a Mask' (Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum)

The oil on canvas painting is not dated, measures 43 x 38 cm, and depicts a figure in an interior. The catalogue's description is: 'A naked man is sitting and trying on a mask with his back to the viewer. There are many other masks on the wall in front of him'.

Ricketts started painting around 1900, copying the darkness of Renaissance masters, and these early paintings are by now extremely darkened (they were thus in the 1930s). But this painting is not darkened, and the tone is lighter, and more colourful; it might date from a somewhat later date. 

There is a red chalk sketch for this painting in the Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle, along with two pencil drawings. A fourth preparatory sketch is in an album with proofs and drawings. As the other drawings in this album are all of early works by Ricketts, it is perhaps not unreasonable to suggest that this painting was of around 1905. It is suggested that it was the first painting by Ricketts that was exhibited.

213. A Summer Miscellany: La Peste

Visiting Paris, you might want to stroll through the Musée d'Orsay, looking for pictures by, for example, Ricketts and Shannon.

The museum owns an oil painting by Ricketts, catalogued as 'La Peste'. The picture (114 x 165 cm) is signed in the lower right hand corner with Ricketts's initials 'C.R.'. 

Charles Ricketts, 'La peste' (painting) [Musée d'Orsay, Paris]

The catalogue does not mention a date, but informs us that the painting was part of the famous collection of Edmund Davis, who in 1915 donated it to the Musée du Luxembourg, also in Paris. It then started a long, and perhaps typically French tour around the city, being moved from one museum to another, - the Jeu de Paume in 1922 and the Musée National d'Art Moderne in 1946. Later it was allocated to the Louvre, and ended up in the Musée d'Orsay in 1980.

The painting was done in 1911 and its English title is 'The Plague'. Paul Delaney described the scene as 'blind victims groping their way among prostrate bodies of the dead and dying'. In his biography of Ricketts, Delaney included an illustration of it. Davis had offered the painting to The Tate in London first, but it had been refused.

I have never seen the original on display; the museum's website does not provide information on the painting being on view or not; and it is a pity that the museum's catalogue record has not been kept up to date.

The same goes for a painting by Shannon in the Musée d'Orsay. This is a portrait of 'The Sculptress (Mrs. Hilton Young)' that has been catalogued as 'Une Statuaire, Miss Bruce'. The painting dates from 1907 and, in 1909, was bought from the artist by the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris. Its journey from one museum to another was almost identical to that of 'The Plague'. The museum's collection also holds a fascinating oil sketch for the same painting.

Charles Shannon, ''The Sculptress (Mrs. Hilton Young) [Musée d'Orsay]

Only the faces (of the model, of her mirror image, and that of her clay model) have not been worked out, but the composition is almost identical to that of the finished painting. 

Kathleen Bruce had studied sculpture with Rodin. Shannon fell in love with her in 1906, and painted her likeness a few times. She, in turn, made statuettes of both Ricketts and Shannon. She married R.F. Scott, the explorer of the Antarctic. He died in 1912, and ten years later she married the politician Edward Hilton Young, and when Young was created Baron Kennet, she came to be known as Baroness Kennet. She had three names: Bruce, Young, Kennet - no wonder cataloguers have been confused.

It would be nice to see the painting with the sketch alongside one day at the museum, or in another museum.

212. A Summer Miscellany: La Biondina

Are you travelling to New York and visiting the Brooklyn Museum? The museum owns four lithographs by Charles Shannon, one of which is 'La Biondina', also called 'La femme aux chats' (that is, the copies issued in France by L'Estampe Originale). It dates from 1894.

Charles Shannon, 'La Biondina' (1894)

The lithograph is signed, in pencil, 'C.H. Shannon' in the lower right corner. It is printed on Japan paper, and measures 21.4 x 25.1 cm.

'Biondina' was given to the Brooklyn Museum by the Charles Stewart Smith Memorial Fund. The museum has three more lithographs by Shannon: 'An Idyll' (1905), 'The Wayfarers' (1904), a lithograph described as 'Woman Bathing' (the title is incorrect, and there are several lithographs that might be intended), and a colour woodcut, 'Autumn' (1898).

The lithographs are not on view.

211. A Summer Miscellany: Don Juan

During the Summer - the holiday season for some (not me) - I will show a few works by Ricketts and Shannon that could be in a museum's gallery, but usually are kept in storage. Today, the first of a sunny series, Charles Ricketts's painting of Don Juan.

Charles Ricketts, 'Don Juan', c. 1911 (Tate Gallery, London)

The painting, oil on canvas, inscribed below right 'CR', measures almost a square metre (1162 x 959 mm; frame: 1515 x 1323 mm) and was presented to the Tate Gallery in London by Sir Otto Beit (who bought it from the artist, for this purpose) in 1917. It is one of series of paintings Ricketts undertook on the subject of Mozart's Don Juan. He could also refer to his friend Bernard Shaw’s play Don Juan in Hell and Lord Byron's poem on the theme. Once again, we see that the Vale Press did not publish all authors or works that Ricketts was fond of. There are Shelley and Keats editions, but the name of Byron lacks conspicuously from the VP publisher's list.

In Ricketts's Self-Portrait, a letter by Ricketts to Muriel Lee Matthews of 18 May 1918 is published. At the time the painting was on show at Grosvenor Gallery and called 'The Death of Don Giovanni'. Ricketts wrote that the curtain 'represents the rush of the wood instruments in the Overture' of Mozart's opera.

In Beyond the Threshold Ricketts relates a story about Don Juan, as told by Oscar Wilde, supposedly.

The painting of Don Juan is not on display at the Tate Gallery, but that should not keep you from visiting the museum. 

210. A Plaque to Commemorate Charles Ricketts

Gavin Morrison and Scott Myles are working on a project concerning the gravestones of type designers, A History of Type Design. Gavin asked me if I happened to know where Ricketts was buried, and if he had a headstone. 

The result of the project combines aspects of typography and art. I quote from the site: 

'[...] using a variation on the Japanese frottage technique of Takuhon, impressions have been taken from the headstones of prominent type-designers. These images have then been used within magazines [...] and have been used to create a lithographic edition with the Barcelona print studio Polígrafa Obra Gráfica. This body of work exists as an ever expanding, but idiosyncratic, anthology of type design. It is necessarily erratic in that it is constrained by the difficulties of determining locations, access and the logistics of finding the grave sites. As a result certain prominent type-designers will fail to feature.'

The research is based on the question whether the designer's own type-design is utilized in the stone-carving. Imprints have been taken from the type-designer graves of William Caslon (1692-1766), William Morris (1834-1896), Eric Gill (1882-1940), Kurt Schwitters (1887-1947), Jan Tschichold (1902-1974) and others.

Ricketts designed and put into execution a monument for Michael Field in 1926, but it has not survived. He did not design a headstone for his own grave, and there is no grave.

Ricketts died on 7 October 1931. He was cremated at Golders Green, and his ashes were to be scattered to the four winds in Richmond Park. His friends found out that the shoe box they were given contained a seemingly endless quantity of ashes, so they decided in the end that Cecil Lewis would take the remaining ashes to be scattered in Arolo near the Lago Maggiore. (The Arolo land had been a present from Ricketts to Lewis.)

Lewis himself hollowed out a niche of the cliff, placed Ricketts's head in bronze (by F.R. Wells) facing the mountains, and a plaque was attached underneath it, 'duly inscribed', as Lewis wrote. The inscription is probably his, but the carving itself may have been a local job.

Bust of Charles Ricketts by F.R. Wells (1902), Arolo, Italy [photograph J.G.Paul Delaney]

209. A First Visit from Ricketts and Shannon

The diaries of Katharine Bradley (1846-1914) and Edith Cooper (1862-1913) have not yet been published in their entirety, but they will be, 'soon', as The Victorian Lives and Letters Consortium assures on its website.

'Michael Field' (1891)

Bradley and Cooper published poems and plays under the pseudonym 'Michael Field'. Katharine was called 'Michael' and Edith 'Henry'. They were lovers and in Ricketts and Shannon they recognized a similar relationship. They were introduced to each other in January 1894, and on 22 May of that year Ricketts and Shannon paid them a visit in Reigate.

The account of this visit was not published in the heavily edited extracts from the journals in the posthumously published Works and Days (1933), edited by T. Sturge Moore, nor in a more recent anthology Michael Field, the Poet (2009), edited by Marion Thain and Ana Parejo Vadillo. A passage was quoted in Emma Donoghue's 1998 biographical sketch We Are Michael Field, and the complete entry was published in Ivor C. Treby's anthology Binary Star. Leaves from the Journal and Letters of Michael Field, 1846-1914 (2006). Treby (1933-2012), whose archive is available in the Bodleian Library, did much to make Michael Field's poems and diary notes accessible to a larger public, and although his editing method involved too many abbreviations and confusing cross references, we cannot be thankful enough for his dedication to the work of Michael Field.

It is from Binary Star (page 130) that I quote Michael Field on the first visit of Ricketts and Shannon. The entry is written by 'Henry', the younger half of Michael Field: Emma Cooper:

They bring their Vale Edition of Hero & Leander but will not have the parcel opened as long as they stay. ..(Ricketts) is an ardent lover of Shannon, his elder by a year - loving him as my Love loves me - following him about with rippling banter & eyes that deprecate the Beloved's wilfulness.. Shannon is called also "Hazelwood" & his second name manages to sum him up. ..I suspect he does not show the pagan fun in him, any more than I do, except in deep intimacy.. We persuade them to stay for our evening meal, & a walk around the garden is proposed.. Ricketts knows a great deal about flowers - Shannon asks the name of the buttercup every spring.. In the study we talk about art - Beardsley & Rothenstein (By the way, Beardsley, who gesticulates now & leads conversation is the only man who sits on Rothenstein with success).. At evening meal Shannon specialises in salmon, Ricketts in gooseberries & cream.. we bid our guests goodbye with a sense we have walked into friendship as deep as mowing grass.. These 2 men live & work together & find rest & joy in each other's love just as we do.. yet Ricketts lovingly teases Shannon because he works in a separate room - "I call Shannon sulky" he laughs.. (Michael) is happy in another's company - sometimes (as with "Dockie") the other takes it to mean more - & afterward is disappointed - no fear of this with Ricketts!'

208. From the Library of Gary Prouk

The sale of English Literature, History, Children's Books & Illustrations at Sotheby's in London on 14 July included books from the library of the late Gary Prouk (1944-2013). Prouk was a Canadian advertising man from Toronto who ended his career as creative director at Sebastian Consultancy, which he and his wife Susan Andrews had founded in 1998. There are several memorial pieces about him online.

Prouk's office was filled with art, but he was a book collector as well.

Gary Prouk in his office

Gary Prouk collected fin-de-siècle books and autograph materials, including first editions of Oscar Wilde and a copy of John Gary's Silverpoints alongside books illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley and letters from French and English artists. He also loved private press books and modern first editions. According to Sotheby's report of the sale, lots with these books 'were recognised for their quality and attracted international bidding.' 

That may be true, however, some lots remained unsold on the day of the auction, and among these unsold books were a number of lots with Vale Press books. The descriptions of these were not detailed enough to see why, but probably Prouk did not only buy pristine copies. Most of the VP books were not in perfect condition, and, moreover, they were ordinary copies. There were no vellum copies, dedication copies, or copies in special bindings, and his set of the Vale Press Shakespeare was far from complete: Prouk owned only eight volumes.

The market for ordinary copies of Vale Press books is not great at the moment, and Prouk may have paid far more for individual books than a series of twelve is worth now. 

Lot 205, for example, contained four works that used to belong to the most wanted Vale Press books: the English and Latin editions of Apuleius's The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche (1897) and De Cupidinis et Psyches Amoribus (1901), the edition of Ecclesiastes (1902), and The Parables from The Gospels (1903). The hammer price with buyer's premium for this lot was £688, being £172 a book. Only twenty years ago, The Parables alone fetched three times that price (£525). Anyway, prices are only one side of book collecting. Let's hope that Prouk enjoyed his books whatever their value.

All in all, Prouk acquired two pre-Vale publications (Daphnis and Chloe, and Hero and Leander), and 53 Vale Press books in 55 volumes, of which 28 did not immediately find a buyer.

207. Charles Shannon's Portraits of E.J. van Wisselingh

The Dutch art dealer E.J. van Wisselingh (1848-1912) and his British wife Isa (Isabella Murray Mowat Angus, 1858-1931), daughter of a Scottish art dealer, moved to London in 1892. The same year, Van Wisselingh opened The Dutch Gallery at Old Bond Street 26. He showed and sold Dutch and French paintings. Ricketts and Shannon met the art dealer in the 1890s en he exhibited their drawings, lithographs, and wood-engravings, in London and in The Netherlands as early as 1895; later he would also put their pastels and paintings on show. In 1900, Van Wisselingh was the first to sell a Shannon painting to a public collection. Ricketts and Shannon befriended the Dutchman, and occasionally they made use of him, for example to bid for them at auction, or to buy furniture for trade prices. Ricketts had his first one-man show of paintings at Van Wisselingh's gallery in 1906, and when Van Wisselingh died, Ricketts designed the lettering on the urn. A Van Wisselingh show of works by Ricketts and Shannon was characterised in a review: 'This is modern of the moderns, as is always the case here' (The Times, 8 July 1902). 

Charles Shannon, portrait of E.J. van Wisselingh (1899)
[Location: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, see www.metmuseum.org]

Shannon made several portraits of Van Wisselingh. In 1895 he executed two portraits in lithography, 'E.J. van Wisselingh' and 'E.J. van Wisselingh in a hat'. In 1899 Shannon finished and signed a portrait in black, white and red chalk (on pink paper) that originally was owned by Van Wisselingh, and in 1924 was still in the possession of his widow. In 2005 the portrait was bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York by its famous curator William Slattery Lieberman (1923-2005) who had worked for the MET since 1979.

Another portrait of Van Wisselingh was done by Shannon in 1900. It is an unsigned oil on canvas, 24 to 20 inches, that was given by the artist to the artist Francis Dodd (1874-1949), later given to Henry Rushbury (1889-1968), and through inheritance left to the painter Theo Ramos. The painting was sold by The Canterbury Auction Galleries on 8 October 2013, and is now offered for sale at The Maas Gallery in London for £8,500.

Charles Shannon, portrait of E.J. van Wisselingh (1900)

This oil portrait was exhibited in The New Gallery by The Society of Portrait Painters in 1902. In The Times (13 November 1902) a critic remarked that the hue was so sombre that it looked 'an exercise in black upon black', though it was 'most solidly thought out and executed', and would in future years be regarded 'as a noble "old master".' 

[Thanks are due to The Maas Gallery for the scan of Shannon's painting.]

206. A Dark Sketch of Medea

A small Charles Ricketts oil sketch will be auctioned today by Dreweatts at Donnington Priory in a sale of Fine Pictures (lot 160).

Charles Ricketts, 'Medea and her Children' (1903)

The sketch is painted in oil on board and measures 29 to 26 cm. The painting was exhibited in 1918 when The Goupil Gallery sold the collection of the Welsh county court judge William Evans (1861-1918). In the foreword of the Goupil catalogue Charles Aitken described Evans as 'a man who took a real delight in painting, and acquired the works of the younger artists as they painted them, instead of the safe, established dead'. 

The Evans collection seems to have started somewhere before 1900. The judge collected paintings by Wilson Steer and Henry Tonks before they became well-known. Aitken wrote: 'he secured works by Conder, Ricketts, Shannon, John, Orpen, Nicholson, Connard and Lamb in their early days, and most of the men whose work is now being more and more appreciated, found in him a genial patron in those trying days before their battle with an apathetic public was won ...'. (Charles Aitken, 'Preface', in Catalogue of a Collection of Oil Paintings, Watercolours & Drawings formed by the Late William Evans. London, Goupil Gallery, 1918, p.7-8).

The sketch of Medea and her children is rather dark and vague, but, according to Dreweatts's catalogue description, it 'captures the immediacy of the artist's creative process and draws inspiration from the working methods of Rubens and other old masters of the 17th century'. Estimated auction price: £1,200-£1,800.

[Note, 13 July 2015: The oil sketch was sold for £992 (hammer price: £800).]

205. A Sea Nymph by Charles Shannon

Today, an early painting attributed to Charles Shannon is included in an auction of Sheppards in Ireland.

There is no title, but the image is described as a 'Pre-Raphaelite study of a sea nymph in a cave'. The painting (90 x 70 cm or 36 x 28 inches) is signed with the initials CHS. There is a label on the back, but the image on the auctioneer's website is not clear.

Charles Shannon, undated painting of a sea nymph

The oil on canvas (lot 1070 in the sale of 'Glenmalire House, Laois and Other Important Clients' on 30 June and 1 July) has an estimated price of €4,000-€6,000.

[Note, 2 July 2015: Apparently this lot remained unsold.]

204. The Art of Sir William Rothenstein

The William Rothenstein exhibition at the Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford will be on show for another fourteen days. It opened on 7 March and will close on 12 July.

Exhibition catalogue The Art of Sir William Rothenstein

William Rothenstein (1872-1945) is perhaps best remembered for his highly entertaining memoirs (Men and Memories) and his lithograph portraits of artist friends and famous contemporaries, whereas his paintings of interiors, Jewish life, French and English country landscapes, and heavily bombed landscapes of war are not often seen.

Rothenstein shares with Ricketts the fate of a man with many identities, making him difficult to grasp, and unfit for comfortable exhibition stories.

William Rothenstein, English Portraits (1898)

Rothenstein's recollections of Ricketts and Shannon are full of detail and wonderful insights. The Bradford exhibition catalogue contains one portrait of Ricketts and Shannon that was published in English Portraits. A Series of Lithographed Portraits. The portraits were issued in parts in 1897 and 1898, and then collected in a book. Part IX, issued in January 1898, included the portrait of Ricketts and Shannon.

William Rothenstein, 'Mr. C. Ricketts and Mr. C.H. Shannon', English Portraits (1898)

Ricketts holds a wood-block, while Shannon looks on, and probably expects Ricketts to start talking again in a minute.

203. Hand-Coloured by an Anonymous Artist

Last week I blogged about Miss Gloria Cardew. The name is a pseudonym for an artist who coloured black-and-white book illustrations, mainly for the London bookseller Frank Karslake. He organized exhibitions of bookbindings and books with coloured plates in 1897, and in 1898 created the Guild of Women Bookbinders. 

Cardew also seems to have coloured copies of Kelmscott Press books, ordered directly by some collectors, and this may well have been the case for Vale Press books. The article on Cardew (written by Denis Collins) notes that she always signed her work:

She always identified her work either by signing the book or by attaching, often to the verso of the front free endpaper, a small label stating: "The Illustrations in this Book were coloured by hand by Miss Gloria Cardew."'

The Vale Press books that were hand-coloured by Cardew were published around the time that she was active as a colourist (between 1897 and 1904). One of the coloured Vale press books was published in 1896, two others in 1897.

Vincent Barlow - who earlier this year contributed a blog about Shannon - wrote to say that he owns a coloured copy of another early Vale Press book, the 1897 edition of The Excellent Narration of the Marriage of Cupide and Psyches by Apuleius. The hand-coloured illustrations have not been signed by the artist, so it seems another colourist was trying her or his hand at colouring Vale Press books as well. The quality of the colouring is of a high standard.

All six wood-engravings in the book have been coloured (in watercolour), as well as the opening initial T. The initial was printed in red, the engravings in black.

Charles Ricketts, 'Love's Pact with Jove' (1897)

There is one important similarity between the illustrations coloured by the anonymous artist and those by Cardew: both artists leave parts of the design uncoloured. However, Cardew's illustrations display a quality that these do not have. Collins writes about Cardew's work: 'The colour was always kept firmly within the lines of the design'. In these illustrations the colouring does not have this flawless quality. In 'Love's Pact with Jove', for example, the red colour of the wings of Love has touched the naked body of Love.

Charles Ricketts, 'The Leap from the Rock' (1987)

Lucius Apuleius, The Excellent Narration of the Marriage of Cupide and Psyches (1897)

Cardew always coloured the images after the book had been bound. She did not colour separately issued proofs of the wood-engravings for Vale Press books. Of the wood-engravings for the Apuleius edition, Ricketts printed several proofs, on India paper, in grey, green, or blue, but these have not been hand-coloured by Ricketts, or by other artists. 

The coloured images change the book's appearance and design. The original colour scheme of the book was black (text and images), white (paper), and adornments in red: the title and initial on page 3, a song on page 7/8, notes and page numbers throughout the book, the 'finis' on page 56, and the two colophon pages with the publisher's device. The wood-engravings blend in with the text. In the coloured copy this is not the case; the images are more conspicuous, and disturb the original balance.

Charles Ricketts, 'Psyches' Invisible Ministrants' (1987)

If Miss Gloria Cardew did not colour this copy, the anonymous artist may have done it at the time of publication, or at any later time, around 1900, or much later, say, the fifties, or even more recently. Karslake sold such coloured copies because they fetched a higher price than the ordinary copies, and such mercantile thoughts certainly have not disappeared from the trade.

The colouring - though less harmonious than that by Cardew - not only displays qualities that testify of artistic talent, the fact that all six wood-engravings, and the initial have been coloured suggests that the colourist enjoyed a high degree of perseverance and purposefulness. Alas, we do not have a name to attach to the coloured images yet.

I think that Ricketts would not have liked these added colours, but one never knows. The initial on page 3 - a page that shows a carefully considered balance between black and red - has been gilded, while the branches and bunches of grapes have been coloured in green.

Lucius Apuleius, The Excellent Narration of the Marriage of Cupide and Psyches, page 3 (1897)

The hand-colouring of such pages does reflect a period in the history of printing that was studied by most patrons of private presses between 1890 and 1900. The earliest printed books in Italy for example imitated lavishly illustrated manuscripts, and the opening pages of these uncunabula were often hand-painted with striking scenes in many colours, including lapis lazuli and gold. The initials in those volumes were often hand-drawn and coloured as well. Printing multi-coloured illustrations was not possible at the time. In the days of the Kelmscott and Vale Presses colour printing was mostly confined to lithography, especially chromolithography, a technique that William Morris nor Charles Ricketts chose to use. 

The addition of colour in Vale Press books remains a question of taste, particularly the collector's taste, and in the last century that taste has changed radically. The modern collector prefers to see the book as it was issued, as a work of art of which all details are decided upon by one artist. A collaboration between artists and dealers usually diminishes the artistic value, while the interventions of collectors are mostly too personal to keep their value. That is to say that a unique coloured copy is not always more valuable than an ordinary uncoloured copy, on the contrary, but now that ordinary copies of Vale Press books are less valuable than ten or twenty years ago, such a copy might fetch a higher price.