65. Alphonse Legros (3)

Earlier, I referred to an exhibition of paintings, drawings and etchings by Alphonse Legros that was held at the Dutch Gallery in London and that was reviewed by Ricketts in The Saturday review of  17 April 1897. The review has not been reprinted.

Catalogue of the Exhibition of pictures, watercolour drawings & etchings of Alphonse Legros (1897) (detail of the title-page)

Legros

In 1859, M. Legros painted "L'ex Voto" and "L'Angélus." In the waning of subsequent years and of many fashions in art, we find his work, with added powers of realization and control, characterized to-day by the same dignity of outlook that made it remarkable thirty-eight years ago. To men who, like Baudelaire, were the first to hail experiments in painting that have since distinguished schools, the work of Legros appealed with a definitive aspect of reticent mastery, at that time rare in art. To-day, in the Babel of methods and aims his pictures remain as a survival from a finer epoch. As is the case with most enduring work, their force has long been felt; but from habit their appeal to old admirers would seem to have slackened with the approach of the first grey hairs and the falling away of some cultured illusions. The appreciation of his work, like the qualities that work embodies, would seem to belong to an epoch of greater enthusiasm and refinement, such as we find incarnated in those collections, now, unfortunately, for the most part dispersed, in which were to be found pictures by Rossetti, Watts, Burne-Jones and Whistler - collections that cannot be formed again. So much for the conditions under which M. Legros's public appearances have become more and more rare, till the fortunate coincidence of this small, but representative, show at Mr. Van Wisselingh's with the purchase of an important picture for the nation has at last given us an opportunity of seeing some of his work in its many phases.

Catalogue of the Exhibition of pictures, watercolour drawings & etchings of Alphonse Legros (1897) (detail of title-page, note the raised space between '14' and 'Brook Street')

We miss, it is true, an adaquate collection of the portraits, by virtue of which M. Legros takes rank among the great portraitists of the world. There are charming drawings of children's heads, but no portion of that gallery of the notable men of our time which can be compared in its own way - that is to say, within the conditions of line work - with the series painted by Mr Watts. With a disdain for that casual aspect of things which keeps the modern realist busy upon the solution of problems that are unnesessary, M. Legros has sought, even in the deliberate choice of such conventional mediums as etching and silverpoint, for the serious forces that underlie the peculiarities of complexion or lighting, and so has noted the mansuetude of Newman, the intense inward disillusion of Manning as intimately as the elemental energies of Carlyle or Berlioz. This collection contains several landscapes, remarkable for a sense of structure in the rendering of ground and trees - along grey roads, beneath the rising of a hill, nestles the quiet of old houses becoming absorbed by the ground; here, the majesty of ancestral trees strikes across the stress and movement of the sky; there, we have the action of repose of figures, thrown into those "antique" gestures that hang about the washing of linen, the hewing of wood, or the rest of the wayfarer. By lovers of the rosy, the sentimental, a touch of sadness will be felt beneath the steady vision of growth and change that we admire in the art of Alphonse Legros. If at times he notes the desolation of the season, or those tragic vicissitudes of the storm and the quarry, we must remember that no sane or quite sincere view of nature should disregard the other side of things - an over-insistence upon sorrow may sometimes, have been a weakness in the great art of Eugène Delacroix, a total disregard of it is often an element of weakness in the best English art.

Alphonse Legros, 'Cardinal Manning' (photograph by George P. Landow)

In the picture "Femmes en Prière," now the property of the nation, we will note a total absence of false sentiment. A row of women at prayer - such is the subject. These women have come to the church to think about their troubles, to find consolation; perhaps merely for the cool and quiet of the walls; and, by their sides are the bundles and umbrellas of the market place. Think of the rendering of a like matter by a common artist. The too-pretty peasant girl, sop for the male susceptibilities, and the "human" interest for those touching home instincts of ladies - a child gazing at a careful sunbeam that cheers with its spilth of pink the natural quiet of the place. M. Legros has pleased himself with a set of hands which are delicate portraits that alone would point to a real study of Holbein. His picture touches one with its quiet and sincerity. There are delightful things for the art lover, common things but charming; the homely plaid upon a scart reminds one that Titian found a small check quite fine enough for the significance of the supper at Emmaus.

Some drawings  of a Progress of Death are at once spontaneous in handling and also in conception. Death forgets his nature (or, perhaps, remembers it) in love, and with youth - Death becomes an enchanter in the music of church service. Here we would instance one marvellously tender drawing, a musician playing to a crowd, that in its admirable rendering of poise and gesture, and in some kindred undercurrent of thought, would seem to belong to this set of Death and the passing of things.

If, glancing round the walls, one is tempted to define the peculiar excellence of the work shown here, an essential quality forces itself upon our attention that makes a difference between the incalculably rich in art and the very poor - the difference between Puvis and Burne-Jones on the one hand and workers with loud recent reputations on the other. That quality is design - design underlying the initial impulse. These designs were remarkable, worth the doing, before they were actually carried out, and the gifts of a rare temperament have been controlled to retain and enhance them. Mr. R.A.M. Stevenson, in his sympathetic note to the Catalogue, quotes le père Corot in support of those powers of memory, that independence of models which separates the master from the workman. This should be insisted upon, for in showing this independence M. Legros has only followed what has been the almost universal practice of artists from Giotto to Tiepolo.

A Burgundian by birth, M. Legros adds to a study of great students in art, such as Raphael, Mantegna, and Poussin, that native raciness of observation found in the realistic sculptors of Burgundy and the mediaeval painter Foucquet. In Burgundy the Roman brick is still turned up in the hoeing of the old vine soil, and, like that of his compatriot, M. Puvis de Chavannes, the work of M. Legros is tinged with an element of breeding, an element of antique taste, the heritage of a race that was civilized more than a thousand years ago. With much that is excellent in French art he combines the faculties of the sculptor, and so we find here medals that would have charmed Matteo da Pasti, and a torso that might have been found at Arles, Nîmes, or Vaucluse. We are told that sculpture can no longer find room in our spaceless houses, yet these medals that might go down to our children as evidences of our own refinement may be held in the hollow of a hand, the frail torso could be niched anywhere.

A contemporary of Manet, Faintin, and Degas, owing to a great precocity his début as an artist belongs to the year in which Millet exhibited "Les Glâneuses" and Courbet began to attract attention. Though in the course of years, like Puvis de Chavannes, he might have achieved a tardy reputation in France, it is in England that he has chosen to remain, and it is here that he won the friendship and admiration of such men as Watts and Rossetti.
                                                                                     Charles Ricketts

Charles Ricketts, 'Legros', in: The Saturday review, 17 April 1897, p. 406-407 [review of an exhibition at the Dutch Gallery, London, April-May 1897].

Catalogue of the Exhibition of pictures, watercolour drawings & etchings of Alphonse Legros (1897) (page xiii)

64. Twelve (no: eleven) woodcuts

Bassenge Buchauktionen in Berlin-Grunewald issues hefty catalogues of books, prints, art, manuscript material and objects since its foundation in 1953. The catalogue of Moderne Literatur & Kunstdokumentation has been published in conjunction with the hundredth auction on 20 October 2012.

Title-page of Twelve woodcuts in black and color (1891-1893)

In it, a copy of the rare portfolio with woodcuts by Lucien Pissarro is described as number 3534, Twelve woodcuts in black and colors, also known as the First portfolio. Work on this was begun in 1891 and Ricketts and Shannon decided with Pissarro to issue the portfolio as a Vale edition. Pissarro wrote to his father Camille (14 January 1892) that only 12 copies would be printed. During 1892 he printed the colour woodcuts (which went back to designs that he made in the previous year) and it seems that the portfolio was issued a year later, in January or February 1893, although its title-page has '1891'. Art dealer P. Durand-Ruel (according to a letter from Camille to Lucien Pissarro, 27 February 1893) prefered the landscapes to the figures and argued that the price was prohibitive (6 guineas). The Dutch art critic and artist Jan Veth wrote about the portfolio on 5 March 1893, and especially liked the colouring of 'First steps', depicting a girl leading a younger girl. This woodcut was printed in deep brown and hand-coloured in pink, blue, red, yellow, and green.

Lucien Pissarro, 'First steps' (woodcut)

Pissarro also added highlights in bronze powder (looking like gold) on several woodcuts, such as 'April' and 'Le tennis'.

Lucien Pissarro, 'April'

The Berlin set - estimated price €5000 - is not complete. It lacks the woodcut 'Le tennis'. Remarkably, the same set was auctioned at Haarlem in May of this year at Bubb Kuyper Auctions. However, the set remained unsold with an estimate of €5000 to €7000. The same set had been auctioned almost ten years earlier at Van Gendt Book Auctions in Amsterdam (Print auction No. 87, 19 June 2001), when it sold for 4200 Dutch guilders (approximately €2000) to a Dutch collector. The set may have been in Dutch collections before that 2001 auction, as it was listed in catalogues of the art dealer Van Wisselingh between 1895 and 1904. The price at the time was 100 Dutch guilders.

A complete set of this portfolio was listed by Sims Reed in 2002 and 2003 for £16.000.

63. Alphonse Legros (2)

Charles Ricketts engraved three wood-cuts after drawings by Alphonse Legros. They were exhibited during 'The first exhibition of original wood engraving' at the Dutch Gallery in 14, Brook Street, London in 1898.

The first exhibition of original wood engraving (London, The Dutch Gallery, 1898, p. v: detail)

The three woodcuts were also listed in A catalogue of paintings, drawings, etchings and lithographs by Professor Alphonse Legros (1837-1911) from the collection of Frank E. Bliss, Esq. (1922) as items 342-343. The first one (342), 'Une messe macabre or Death in the Chantry', was called 'La mort musicienne' in the Dutch Gallery catalogue of 1898. In the background a skeleton is conducting the congregation, while another skeleton plays the organ to the left. The music has made the audience jumpy. 

Charles Ricketts, 'Une messe macabre' (or Death in the Chantry), woodcut after a drawing by Alphonse Legros

The other two (listed together as 343) are 'Death the wooer' (earlier title: 'Death the persuader') and 'Young girl and death' (also known as 'Jeune fille et la mort'). The former of these was reproduced on the cover of the 1922 catalogue; the latter was printed in Léonce Bénédite's Alphonse Legros (Paris, Librairie Paul Ollendorff, 1900, facing p. 20) and an illustration of that image can be found on: Adventures in the print trade (2008). Both woodcuts show a young woman and a skeleton. In 'Death the wooer' the woman is seen from the front. Death has stripped her of her robe, and is offering a money-bag. In 'Young girl and death' we see them from behind and the skeleton has become her lover.

Charles Ricketts, 'Death the wooer', woodcut after a drawing by Alphonse Legros

Charles Ricketts, 'Young girl and death', woodcut after a drawing by Alphonse Legros

The inclusion of the three woodcuts after drawings by Legros in the 1898 exhibition of original wood engraving, an initiative of the Vale Press coterie, was an attempt to link the efforts of a younger generation - T.S. Moore, C.H. Shannon, C. Ricketts, R. Savage, L. Pissarro and William Nicholson - to those of the generation of J.F. Millet and Alphonse Legros. A year earlier, the Dutch Gallery had shown an exhibition of paintings, drawings and etchings by Legros, which was reviewed by Ricketts in The Saturday Review.

62. Extra illustrated

The catalogue for sale 2289 of the New York based Swann Auction Galleries describes a complete set of the Vale Shakespeare, which will be auctioned on 11 October. The headline in the catalogue promises a unique copy:

Copy Number One, The very uncommon extra illustrated edition.

This set comprises the 37 volumes of the Vale Press edition of Shakespeare, which was issued in 1900-1903, in 'full turquoise morocco' bindings, displaying 'hand tooled wavy gilt surrounding a red inlaid flower design in gilt-ruled borders'. The illustration shows how lavishly the bindings have been decorated. It is not mentioned that for this set the original buckram bindings, with a blind-stamped design by Charles Ricketts, who designed the series from cover to cover, have been discarded.

The Vale Shakespeare edition (1900-1903) as offered by Swann Auction Galleries, 2012

The set has been extra illustrated with original watercolour frontispieces, with Grolier plates, Boydell plates and handcoloured Pillé plates, according to the catalogue, and also with 'original drawings of Shakespearian characters in watercolour'.

Title page of Shakespeare, The life of Timon of Athens (Vale Press, 1900), an extra illustrated copy

None of these additional drawings or prints are by Ricketts, however, the description, by stating that this is the 'uncommon extra illustrated edition', suggests that it was his own intention to add these to the volumes, and this extra illustrated copy is a special Vale Press edition. The book contains an extra limitation page, announcing:

The Vale Press edition of the works of Shakespeare is limited to 300 copies. This is copy number one.

This page is not set in the Avon type, which was used exclusively for the edition, nor in one of the other two types that were designed by Ricketts for the Vale Press. The limitation page is certainly not an initiative of the Vale Press, but probably the work of a collector or dealer. John Lane, who distributed copies in the United States, never advertised such an edition. Whoever was responsible followed the fashion of the times, first by having the complete set rebound in leather, secondly by adding all these plates, and thirdly by adding these bogus limitation pages. There is no number one, we can only say that there was a collector who wanted to be a Number One Collector.

Inserted limitation page in Shakespeare, The life of Timon of Athens (Vale Press, 1900)

The idea was to create a luxurious, personal and unique copy, and if this meant that the unity of the book's design was distorted, who cared? The collector clearly did not share Ricketts's ideals and opinions on book design. He inserted the limitation page where Ricketts had intended two opposing pages to form a whole.

Original opening pages in Shakespeare, The life of Timon of Athens (Vale Press, 1900)

This is not a Vale Press book along Ricketts's lines anymore, but has become a Victorianized edition, and, as such, it is a memento of a certain collector's tradition, though not a representative of the private press revolution that involved the Vale Press in setting an example for commercial presses. Here we see the collector as a traditionalist, destroying the aspirations of a more modern movement in book design.

61. Alphonse Legros (1)

The artist Alphonse Legros, born in Dijon in 1837, came to England in 1863, after he studied art in Dijon and Paris. In 1864, he married Frances Rosetta Hodgson. A painter and etcher, Legros became a teacher of etching at the South Kensington School of Art. He was also Slade Professor at University College in London, and in 1881 he was naturalised, but although he would live in England for the rest of his life, he never came to speak the language properly.

Alphonse Legros at 62

Ricketts and Shannon considered him a friend and enjoyed his anecdotes and art gossip, however, he could also bore them to death when he came to stay for the day and kept them from working (*). Ricketts wrote twice about Legros' work, in 1897 and in 1922. The 1922 piece served as an introduction for A catalogue of paintings, drawings, etchings and lithographs by Professor Alphonse Legros (1837-1911) from the collection of Frank E. Bliss, Esq. The catalogue was issued by P. & D. Colnaghi & Co in May 1922, for an exhibition at the Grosvenor Galleries. 'Alphonse Legros', the introduction by Ricketts, was never reprinted:

Alphonse Legros

It is rare to find a collector who does not follow the fashions of the moment and whose hobby is to preserve and illustrate the several manifestations of a single outstanding personality. Unmoved by the lure of popularity the owner of this fine collection of works by Legros has brought together a few notable pictures, a superb series of drawings and a unique collection of etchings by this master who, unmoved by the popular successes of his time, counts in various fields of endeavour alike as an initiator and an example.

Legros was born in 1837. In his youth the battle between classicism and romanticism was over, and both movements had, in the main, become merged by compromise into the anecdotic art beloved by our grandparents. The outstanding painters of the forties - Millet, Daumier, Corot and even Chassèrieau - were systematically persecuted or ignored; it required the sensational advent of Courbet to force the attention of the public towards a more virile and spontaneous outlook upon painting, and to break with the admiration of outworn studio conventions in workmanship and subject matter. The modern French school owes its orientation, be it in realism or in impressionism, entirely to the example and the ethics of Courbet. To-day, when his opponents are forgotten, when it is time even to call a truce, it is difficult to realise that for years each advocate of naturalism, each effort to represent contemporary life, and each assertion of individualism in craftsmanship had to face the hostility of old vested interests and an equally tenacious development of the opposing schools. I have not the space at my disposal to describe the many diverging impulses in the French school of the nineteenth century - so rich in effort and experiment, nor has the time come to value the output and tendencies of this revolution of seventy years ago in which Legros was then a valiant recruit. Baudelaire, whose estimate of contemporary painting was prophetic in much that is to-day universally accepted, was early in praising the outstanding merit of the young artist's picture L'Angelus, executed in 1859, and his early sombre etchings. The more famous and ambitious early work, the Ex Voto, is now at Dijon, in this the influence of Courbet is very strong; it caused a sensation in the Salon of 1861, and Legros would often speak with humour and some emotion of Ingres' verdict of this picture when, in later years, he worshipped the Master of Montauban and had grown impatient with the painter of Ornans and his influence. "What a pity," said Ingres, "that this young man with his excellent aptitudes should be in such and evil course!"

The ill treatment of the younger men had grown scandalous at the Salons. To meet the public outcry an exhibition of the "Refusés" was ordered by the Emperor in 1863, this included pictures by Manet, Whistler, Pissarro, Cazin, Harpignies, Jongkind and J.P. Laurens. To Manet with his Déjeuner sur l'Herbe, befell a success of scandal; to Whistler a success of astonishment - was his White Girl indeed a person of a mediumistic manifestation? In Zola's book "l'OEuvre" we shall find a vivid description of the exhibition with its hustling crowd ready to laugh at anything.

On Whistler's advice, Legros left France in 1863 for England where he was to settle and to remain until his death, 1911. From the first he became known to Rossetti and his circle, to Watts and to Leighton; he became one of the constant exhibitors in the old Grosvenor Gallery, and was for years a famous teacher in the Slade School.

Alphonse Legros, 'Les moines bûcherons', painting, ca. 1860 (from: A catalogue of paintings, drawings, etchings and lithographs by Professor Alphonse Legros (1837-1911) from the collection of Frank E. Bliss, Esq, 1922, plate LXV)

The two pictures Les Moines Bûcherons, Le Manége or Horse Well belong to a series of designs illustrating the life of the Trapist Monks dome mainly between 1860-1863. In these the influence of Courbet is absent, and from the date of his arrival in England it grew less and less; the love of balanced or even formal design increases, till Legros, whose youth has striven to express reality for its own sake, grew more serene in his outlook, and it can be said his work belongs to that line in French art where we shall find Philippe de Champaigne, Poussin and Millet. Classed in dictionaries as a realistic painter, he is in temper a classicist - an unfrocked classicist if you will. In this purpose he is more conscious and more deliberate than Millet, more preoccupied with external form for its own sake, and his outlook less emotional or didactic. At a time when his contemporaries and friends of the Salon des Refusés became famous as realists and impressionists and were to relegate design to a secondary place, Legros became more and more exclusively a designer.

The influence of Whistler upon the generation of painters in the last years of the nineteenth century tended to estrange Legros from most of the younger English artists, for the former friends had, in course of time, become irreconcilable in aim and character alike. To meet him in the later part of his life was to listen to a friend of Baudelaire and his contemporaries, who spoke of Ingres, Delacroix, and Millet as if they were yet living, and of Manet and Rodin as if they were still promising young men. In his hostility to certain rapid fashions of the moment, he was as mordant as Degas, whom he remembered with affection and would often quote. In admiration none could be more illuminating, he was the contemporary of Fromentin whom he had met, and in conversation Raphael, Titian, and Poussin each would become as vividly present to the listener as Monsieur Ingres praising Watteau, or Millet analysing Raphael to Fantin in the Louvre on a Sunday afternoon. My personal indifference to Poussin has been scolded into reason and this great master's constructive gifts held up to admiration. To this former disciple of Courbet the harmony expressed by the divine Raphael, Holbein and Poussin counted most. Descipline, balance, design, a hatred of all exaggeration - such were the sober virtues he valued and strove for and which we shall find in the pictures and drawings upon these walls which the patient enthusiasm of their owner has brought together for our admiration.
                                                                       Charles Ricketts

(*) Paul Delaney, Charles Ricketts. A biography. London 1990, p. 51.

See also Alphonse Legros (2).

60. Shannon's cretonne

The principal bedroom in the Keep (Chilham Castle, Kent) - Ricketts's and Shannon's country retreat in the nineteen-twenties - featured a four-poster bed hung with a patterned cotton after a design by Shannon. It was illustrated in an article by Christopher Hissey in Country life (21 June 1924) and described as a 'large mediaeval pattern', which was an 'example of how to treat rooms of this kind'.

Bed curtains, principal bedroom, The Keep, Chilham Castle, Kent, 1924 (from Country life, 21 June 1924)

The cretonne was done after a design by Charles Shannon. A black and white illustration of it appeared in Charles Shannon A.R.A., a volume of the Masters of modern art series that was published by Colour Ltd. in London in 1920. This volume contained an introduction by 'Tis' (Herbert Furst) followed by eleven plates, the last one being the 'dove and fig', a design for a cretonne.

'Dove and fig', design for cretonne by Charles Shannon (from: Tis, Charles Shannon, A.R.A. London, Colour Ltd, [1920], plate XI)

The white dove, picking a fig, is seen against a background of overlapping ovals. Both,the photograph of the bed curtain and the design for the cretonne were not printed in colour. However, there is an earlier painting by Shannon that pictures the same design on a folding screen. This painting, 'Morning toilet' (1912) was also illustrated in the 1920 volume by Tis.

Charles Shannon, 'Morning toilet', 1912 (from: Tis, Charles Shannon, A.R.A. London, Colour Ltd., [1920], plate X)

The designs are almost identical, although in the painting the ovals do not overlap or even touch each other. The leaves and the figs have been painted green, the stem and the leaves behind the dove are yellow, while the ovals are pale blue.

Has the bed curtain survived? Was there also an original folding screen in Shannon's studio?

The painting, 'Morning toilet', was originally in the possession of Edmund Davis, who owned Chilham Castle in the twenties and who died in the castle in 1939. The art collector and 'leader of the South African mining industry' (as he was called in an obituary) was born in Australia, but had moved to South Africa and later to England. Edmund and Mary Davis donated several paintings to the National Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa, the 'Morning toilet' being one of them. Last year this painting was mentioned in the papers, after an X-ray research had revealed that underneath the upper layers of paint another face had been hidden.

Charles Shannon, 'Morning toilet, 1912 (detail): an x-ray image (Rachel Alexander, SA Museum)

59. Una casa di melograni

An Italian translation of Oscar Wilde's A house of pomegranates was published in 1980 by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore in Milan, together with a translation of The happy prince. The collection appeared as volume 301 in a series, Gli Oscar that also comprised L'isola del tesoro (R.L. Stevenson) and Il meraviglioso mago di Oz (L.F. Baum).

The Wilde volume contained illustrations that were taken from the earliest editions: drawings by Walter Crane and Jacomb Hood, and of course, Ricketts and Shannon. Astonishingly, the pocket book reproduces not only Ricketts's drawings for A house of pomegranates, but also the four plates by Shannon which were printed in France and came out almost invisibly in the original. For the Italian edition they have been printed in sepia, and although they are smaller than the original the images are remarkably clear.

The book reproduces the title page of the first edition on the front cover, however, it has been reworked, no doubt to attain a more attractive cover picture.

Cover for the Italian edition of A house of pomegranates: Oscar Wilde, Il principe felice e Una casa di melograni (Milano, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1980)

In the introduction Masolino d'Amico explains:

Anche degli attenti esegeti wildiani hanno ripetuto senza verificarla la storia della presunta invisibilità di tutte le illustrazioni; laddove le famigerate quattro tavole a colori, peraltro leggibili almeno in certe copie meno danneggiate, costituiscono soltanto una parte piccola, probabilmente la più trascurabile, della decorazione del libro. In realtà proprio nei motivi in bianco e nero, nelle illustrazioni minute, nei fregi, nei capoversi eccetera, Ricketts e Shannon diedero prova di grande delicatezza e sensibilità, inserendosi senza sforzo in una squisita tradizione inglese di abbellimento dei libri, che vanta i nomi illustri di Tenniel e di Rackham, oltre a quello grandissimo di Beardsley. (p. 13)

Decoration for the titlepage of Oscar Wilde, A house of pomegranates (1891), designed by Charles Ricketts

The coloured Italian version of the title page for A house of pomegranates is realistic up to a point (although Ricketts wouldn't approve of it): the orange and red pomegranates are easily discernable between the pale green leaves, while the yellow mask and the figure of the woman and the faun stand out as well. It is rather strange that the embroidery is kept black and white; in this version it should have been full of bright colours.

58. Curious errors (4)

One of the most fascinating but elusive characters of the 1890s is Gleeson White, who frequently referred to the work of Ricketts and Shannon in magazine articles and who wrote two longer essays about Ricketts's work, one in The pageant (the 1896 volume) and one in The magazine of art (April 1897). Not much is written about Gleeson White, who died before he reached his fifties.

Gleeson White (1851-1898) was one of the founders of The studio in 1893 and an author of books about design. He was also a book designer of importance himself who demonstrated a perceptive eye for younger artists.

In his essays about Ricketts and Shannon, one feels that his criticism was well informed. It is therefore quite surprising to read, in his 1897 essay 'At the Sign of the Dial. Mr Ricketts as a book-builder' (The magazine of art, April 1897, p. 304-309) the following paragraph:

The earliest book produced under Mr. Ricketts's entire control is "Silver-Points" (Lane, 1891) - a tall thin octavo, which, in its dainty cover (designed by Mr. Charles H. Shannon), is a treasure to collectors and a continual joy to the lover of fine books.

The book was not published in 1891, but in 1893: we can easily forgive a slip of the pen like that. However, the attribution of the famous Silverpoints cover to Shannon instead of Ricketts, is a curious mistake, and one that I have not seen repeated by others.

Cover for John Gray, Silverpoints (1893), designed by Charles Ricketts: the deluxe edition bound in vellum (left) and the ordinary edition in green cloth (right) [picture from Strange flowers]

57. Curious errors (3)

Stephan Tschudi Madsen's phrase about 'Charles Ricketts and his pupil Robert Shannon' (see my comments in no. 55) was repeated literally in a Belgian publication about literary magazines around the turn of the twentieth century: Raymond Vervliet's De literaire manifesten van het fin de siècle in de Zuidnederlandse periodieken 1878-1914, published in Gent in 1982:

'Charles Ricketts en zijn leerling Robert Shannon' (p. 114).

At the time, Madsen's study about art nouveau was no longer the only book on the subject of art nouveau, and both Stephen Calloway and Joseph Darracott had published a book about Ricketts that could have been consulted by Vervliet, who, also, neglected to read John Russell Taylor's 1966 more general study on The art nouveau book in Britain, which by 1982 had reached an almost iconic status as a work of pioneering research and had recently been reprinted.

Dust wrapper for John Russell Taylor, The art nouveau book in Britain (reprint, 1980)

I suppose that Vervliet's work, which was an important contribution to our knowledge of fin-de-siècle periodicals in Belgium, will have been the source for another round of quotes containing Madsen's error.

And what about Madsen himself? Was he the source of 'pupil' and 'Robert Shannon', or was he also quoting a not completely trustworthy publication?

56. Curious errors (2)

My summer series of curious errors continues today. In Simon Loxley's Type. The secret history of letters (2004) I came across a passage (on page 94) about the type designer Frederic Goudy, who was the owner of The Village Press, an American private press:

Inspired by Charles Ricketts's Songs and Poems of Sir John Suckling, designed by Ricketts and Thomas Cobden-Sanderson, Goudy now decided he wanted to set up his own press.

Patterned paper (detail), designed by Charles Ricketts, for The poems of Sir John Suckling (1896)

I wrote about the patterned paper for this book, The poems of Sir John Suckling (1896) in December 2011. This Vale Press book was, of course, designed by Ricketts alone. Cobden-Sanderson, at that time a bookbinder, who, in 1900, would become the co-owner of the Doves Press (with Emery Walker) had nothing at all to do with the design of the Vale Press books. Where did Loxley get this piece of misinformation?

It turns out, that Loxley, a graphic designer and writer on design and typography, quotes an author and editor of The New York Times Book review, D.J.R. Bruckner, who published a biography about Goudy in 1990: Frederic Goudy. Bruckner related on page 44:

One book Goudy encountered in the Saints and Sinners Corner was The Songs and Poems of Sir John Suckling, printed in the Vale type designed by Charles Ricketts and Charles James Cobden-Sanderson, with woodcut borders and initials by Ricketts.

Loxley corrected Charles James Cobden-Sanderson to Thomas [James] Cobden-Sanderson, but should have deleted his name completely. Bruckner's text contains more of such trivial errors, calling Ricketts Sir Charles Ricketts (as Walter Tracy pointed out in The new criterion); Ricketts was elected as a member of the Royal Academy, but the abbreviation 'R.A.' behind his name should not be confused with a knighthood. Elsewhere (page 38 and the index page) Bruckner refers to Ricketts as 'C.W. Ricketts', adding a puzzling initial 'W'.

Goudy himself wrote, in the introduction to A bibliography of The Village Press by Melbert B. Cary, Jr. (1938, p. 5-6):

I have told elsewhere how the sight of a Vale Press copy of the Poems of Sir John Suckling first stirred my imagination regarding its type, the hand-made paper and its general get-up as a private press publication. At that time this particular book, to me, was an aristocrat belonging to an aristocracy of craft and typographic art. A new leaf in the book of my life was turned and my interest in fine bookmaking was born; a wide prospect was disclosed and a world that lay beyond the horizon of my imagination invited exploration. [...] Two or three years ago, Miss Fanny Borden, Librarian of Vassar College Library, at a talk I gave before a group of Vassar College students, remembered that I mentioned this book as the earliest inspirer of my, as yet, unawakened taste and desire for greater knowledge of private press publications, and kindly presented me with a copy of the Poems; not, of course, the actual copy I saw at McClurg's [a bookshop in Chicago], but one of the same issue, which I note now is dated 1896, thus fixing the beginnings, the vision, it may be, of The Village Press itself.

Another copy of this book, inscribed by Goudy to Edmund Geiger Gress, is said to be in the collection of the Grolier Club, New York.

55. Curious errors (1)

Now and then, one comes across a paragraph on Ricketts and Shannon in books about art and literature of a general kind, containing curious errors regarding biographical facts. One example is a monograph by Stephan Tschudi Madsen (1923-2007), Art nouveau, published in English in 1967. On page 80 we read:

'in 1889 the first number of The Dial appeared, edited by Charles Ricketts and his pupil Robert Shannon.'

One may wonder how Charles was rechristened Robert in the first place, and then - while he was two years older - became to be seen as his pupil. Of course, literature about Ricketts and Shannon was rare and not that well informed at the time. But still, the misguiding detail seems to betray a more than superficial knowledge about the pair.

Front cover for the Dutch translation of S. Tschudi Madsen, Art nouveau (1967)

The Dutch translator made it worse. Duco van Weerlee, in his 1968 translation of Art nouveau (published by W. de Haan/J.M. Meulenhoff), introduced several misspellings for Ricketts, such as 'Rickett' and 'Ricket' (p. 81) - as if losing the name, one letter at the time, - and he rechristened him as well, not to Robert, but to 'Thomas Rickett' (p. 56, 58, index p. 256). One finds these errors repeated by other writers.

54. Queer domesticity

The July 2012 issue of the Journal of British studies (available through JSTOR) features an essay by Matt Cook, senior lecturer in history and gender studies at Birkbeck, University of London, about the 'domestic passions' of Charles Shannon and Charles Ricketts. An earlier presentation on the subject was given on 28 October 2010 at the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research and can be heard on the website of the Backdoor Broadcasting Company (BBC).

Homosexuality and home life in the twentieth century is one of Matt Cook's current projects, he is now writing a book on Queer domesticity, and he has published London and the culture of homosexuality 1885-1914 (2003) and A gay history of Britain (2007).

His article, 'Domestic passions: unpacking the homes of Charles Shannon and Charles Ricketts', opens with a description of their activities at Chilham Keep in Kent, which they used as their country retreat.

The interior of the Keep at Chilham Castle

Their redecoration of the Norman tower was illustrated in an article in Country life (June 1924) written by Christopher Hissey. Matt Cook analyzes Hissey's words:

'Shannon and Ricketts aligned themselves with [...] a particularly British and especially late Victorian and Edwardian middle- and upper-class domestic culture. If their investment in the home was in many ways typical of their class and of this period, however, it also spoke of them a little queerly - and not only because the home was increasingly seen as a feminine preserve and passion. Hussey hints at this in his mention of the keep's association with Edward II and the final (unnamed but notorious) "crisis" of his reign (the king was purportedly murdered by the anal insertion of a hot poker [an uncorroborated story]). This was, it seemed, an appropriate domestic heritage for the new residents. By imagining them in a "peacock bower," meanwhile, Hussey nodded to late nineteenth-century Wildean aestheticism. Having established the couple in their ancient setting and rendered them respectable in that way, he then signals and also legitimizes their queerness. The couple, I argue in this article, did something similar for themselves in the way they decorated, furnished, and lived at the keep and in the London homes they shared from 1886 in Kennington, Chelsea, Richmond, Kensington, and Regent's Park.'

Art reproductions pinned on the wall of Ricketts and Shannon's home at Kennington Road

One might have issues with the argumentation, and Matt Cook seems to realize that when he says:

'Neither Shannon nor Ricketts described themselves as homosexual, Uranian, or inverted, nor did they allude to the sex they might have had together. Ricketts playfully refused to answer the classicist John Addington Symonds's pleading questions on the subject, though in relaying the anecdote down the years indicated an ease and a certain mischievousness about the topic. Instead, Shannon and Ricketts's bond and relationship was articulated by the men themselves and by their circle of friends in terms of their coresidence; their emotional, practical, and aesthetic investment in their homes; their vast collection of art and antiques; and the artistic and design work that was closely identified with the places where they lived (their Vale Press, for example, was named after their first Chelsea home). [...] I examine some of the ways in which home functioned for the couple as a symbol and material indicator of queer alienation, belonging, difference, and normalization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.'

Original prints or drawings hanging on a door in the dining room of Lansdowne House (enlarged)

Cook realizes that we know little of Shannon's sexual tastes, apart from his heterosexual adventures and his contemplating marriage on several occasions. The intensity of their bond is of course difficult to understand. Ricketts and Shannon had an unconventional life, certainly, but that their connections and affections 'cut across gender, sexuality, age, and class divisions' can not be seen as typical of homosexual or homosocial couples alone, as a lot of artists gave over to a nonconformist way of living.

A table with objects in Lansdowne House, drawing room, c. 1907

Cook has a tendency to interprete all Ricketts's sayings as official communications of the couple, while he also goes back and forth in time, negating the different circumstances of their lives, that underwent some radical changes after 1900. However, Cook belongs to a group of scholars that have come to study Ricketts and Shannon's work and life from an angle that may well lead to new discoveries, and the rearrangement of known facts brings up to date insight in the extraordinary lives of both artists.

53. A medal for a portrait

On Saturday 5 February 1898 a private view at the Dutch Gallery in London introduced the guests to medals, plaques, seals, and some drawings, paintings and other objects at the First exhibition of the Society of Medallists. A catalogue was set in Ricketts's Vale type and printed on Vale Press paper by the Ballantyne Press for E.J. van Wisselingh's small gallery that, according to a later commentary in Literature, 'seldom fails to interest the visitor' (8 December 1900).

Catalogue of the First exhibition of the Society of Medallists (1898, p. 4-5)

The Dutch art dealer had opened a London shop in 1892 (it was to be closed in 1916), hoping to broaden the scope of his stock and to represent English and Scottish artists. He mounted three to four exhibitions a year at 14 Brook Street, which, however, were less successful than his shows in Amsterdam. He also introduced the work of Ricketts, Shannon, Rothenstein and others to the Dutch audience in the late nineties, but, although much effort was put into it, moving the exhibition from Amsterdam to The Hague and Rotterdam, sales were far from impressive.

Ricketts was a member of the Society of Medallists, when Alphonse Legros was its president, and Charles Shannon a committee member. In 1897 Legros had made a medal with a portrait of Ricketts and an image of a woodcutter on the reverse. Legros had also made a portrait medal of Shannon, and these two medals, along with a medal of the Duke of Devonshire, 'were hung by themselves; twenty-five others inhabit one case', as the Pall Mall Gazette reported (7 February 1898). The same paper wrote about a portrait of Shannon, a pencil drawing by Legros, 'a most excellent likeness admirably modelled'.

Alphonse Legros, 'Ch. Shannon', 1897, cast bronze (scanned image from The studio, 1898, by George P. Landow, see The Victorian Web)

The portrait of Shannon on Legros' medal was appreciated by the sitter, but not that much by Ricketts, who thought it a little dull or quiet. Ricketts later reworked the portrait as a wood-engraved frontispiece for the Catalogue of Mr. Shannon's lithographs (1902).

Charles Ricketts (after a medal by Alphonse Legros), 'Ch. Shannon', wood engraving, frontispiece for A catalogue of Mr. Shannon's lithographs (1902)

In Ricketts's version the lettering is cluttered, and the face looks less fair, a bit older, with the hair curling more lively and wild than in Legros' portrait. Shannon's face in Legros' version is more or less blank, while in his partner's case, the expression has a stern, or even disapproving, look. The mouth in the wood-engraving is different. The lips are opened, but as if Shannon is withholding comment. The eye, too, has a more tired look to it than in the sportsman-like version by Legros, as if Ricketts wanted to picture a man who has experienced life instead of studied it. It also seems that Legros saw Shannon as a somewhat prim English artist, and Ricketts preferred to see Shannon as a Roman emperor.

52. Farewell to Dublin

My recent visit to Dublin (see Ireland where I have never been and A prize binding) brought me to Parnell Square, where the Dublin Writers Museum stands almost next door to the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

Decorated ceiling, Dublin Writers Museum, June 2012

The Writers Museum, situated in two restored Georgian houses at the north side of the square, has a charmingly old fashioned feel to it. I think I have never before seen so many more or less famous typewriters in two rooms. Photography, alas, was not allowed. Upstairs is a splendid reception room, with decorated plaster ceilings, busts and paintings, and, surprisingly a piano that was bought by James Joyce in 1910, when he lived in Triest. The instrument, manufactured by Anton Petrof, is on loan from the James Joyce Museum. (Incidentally, while I was walking the Dublin streets, Ulysses was published in Amsterdam in a new Dutch translation by Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes: Ulixes).

James Joyce's piano

Next to this 'Gallery of Writers' is a small room with bookcases, containing a selection of recently published and not systematically acquired or arranged Irish books.

Dublin Writers Museum, library, June 2012

Two odd volumes of Yeats' collected works were placed on the shelves (on opposite sides of the room). One can easily recognize the binding design by Ricketts that I discussed in blog 48 on an edition Plays in prose and verse, which was published in 1922 and reprinted several times, carrying the abbreviated title Plays on the spine.

Dublin Writers Museumm, library shelf, June 2012

51. Anniversary & Adoration

This is an anniversary blog, commemorating the first post to my weblog, almost a year ago, when on 20 July 2011 I decided it was time to write online about Ricketts. Some people anxiously told me they did not think that a weekly blog about Ricketts would survive for a year, due to lack of subjects. The opposite is what happened: the list of subjects I can write about is longer than ever, and I would like to thank Ton Leenhouts for his support and for his suggestion that I write about the patterned papers for the Vale Press books, a series of seven blogs that will be continued. Also, I am grateful to Marja Smolenaars for correcting my usual grammatical errors and typos. Looking back, I am particularly pleased with a contribution by Paul Delaney about Ricketts's mother and another one about the Burlington magazine by Barbara Pezzini. If you would like to write an article for this blog, please mail me, as the blog is intended for Ricketts scholars, Ricketts collectors, Ricketts enthousiasts, the 'Ricketts racket', as Paul Delaney once called us.

In April, one hundred years ago, a new book of poems was published by Sands & Co. in London and Edinburgh, Poems of adoration, written by Michael Field. These belonged to 'the first fruits of our Catholic life' (*). The poet Gordon Bottomley admired the cover of their book.

Michael Field, Poems of adoration (1912): two copies with the upper board blocked in gold and two copies with the upper board blindstamped with a design by Charles Ricketts

Bottomley wrote: 'How happy I was to see the lovely lines playing together in crystal-clear chimings again, as I first saw them when I was a boy and thought there was never such a master of line - indeed there never was and there is not.' Ricketts, who had designed the much admired cover, had to admit that most of the poems were closed to him, 'owing to temper or subject matter', as 'the religious spirit is far more constant and very inward.'

The binding design incorporated Christian symbols, such as the Holy Spirit (on top), a burning lamp, organ pipes on either side of a crucifix, and an altar. Underneath are the words 'Adoremus in aeternum sanctissimum sacramentum', while lines with dots, circled dots and two small leaves form an orderly rectangular pattern, which is broken by three diagonal lines symbolizing the stigmata. The design was blocked in gold on the upper cover and the spine was also printed in gold. However, there are also copies with the design blindstamped on the upper cover (the spine design still printed in gold), probably a secondary binding.

Michael Field, Poems of adoration (1912), four copies: spine design

Ricketts's own copy was exhibited in 1933 at the Royal Academy ('lent by the estate of Charles Shannon, Esq., R.A.') and that copy had the gold tooling on purple cloth which makes the design so brilliant and evocative.

(*) Works and days. From the journal of Michael Field, 1933, p. 308.

50. Patterned papers (g: Wild rose)

The only patterned paper for a Vale Press book that was not designed by Charles Ricketts is the one that can be found on the cover of De la typographie et de l'harmonie de la page imprimée. William Morris et son influence sur les arts et métiers, which was published in February 1898. The cover paper, with a pattern of wild roses (in profile), printed in orange and green on a pale green paper, was designed by Lucien Pissarro in 1897 and printed by Esther Pissarro in December 1897.

Cover for De la typographie et de l'harmonie de la page imprimée. William Morris et son influence sur les arts et métiers (1898)

That Lucien Pissarro designed this paper was no coincidence, as he had in mind to publish the book at his own press, The Eragny Press, and after the text of the two essays, written jointly by Ricketts and Pissarro, had been corrected by Georges Lecomte, Pissarro started to set up the text in the spring of 1897. After eight pages had been set (not yet printed), he suffered the first of a series of strokes, which partly paralyzed him. Esther and Lucien Pissarro spent a few months in France and after their return to England, Lucien had two more attacks. It was decided that Ricketts would take over the book for his Vale Press. The other pages were set at the Ballantyne Press, however, printing was delayed by a strike. At the beginning of January 1898 the printed quires were ready for the binders; the book was published a good six weeks later.

Meanwhile, Esther had printed the cover paper, for which a woodblock had been supplied by T.N. Lawrence (£1.19.06), the paper had been supplied by P. Young (.05.00). The whole block had 23 rows of roses, and in each row nine flowers were shown. The book is somewhat smaller and has the paper pasted on the back cover, the spine and the front cover, showing a series of 6½ roses in each row, while from top to bottom 21 rows can be counted. One leaf of the patterned paper sufficed for one book. Esther Pissarro may have printed around 300 leaves in all, as the projected edition was 256 paper copies. However, the printer at the Ballantyne Press made an error and printed no more than 216 paper copies.

Patterned paper for De la typographie... (1898), designed by Lucien Pissarro

The surplus leaves may have been used for an Eragny Press book that was issued in 1902: Francis Bacon's Of gardens has the same cover paper, however, additional leaves would have had to been printed for the job. The design was used again for La belle dame sans merci by John Keats (1905), but for this book the design was printed in green and yellow.