641. Books at the 'The First Exhibition of Original Wood-Engraving'

In earlier blogs about the Ricketts & Shannon circle's exhibition at The Dutch Gallery in December 1898, 'First Exhibition of Original Wood-Engraving', I wrote about criticisms of the typography of the catalogue and about the authorship of its introduction (see blogs 426 and 462).

The First Exhibition of Original Wood-Engraving (1898: colophon)

The catalogue lists only prints, but the colophon mentions prints and books. Which books were actually on display?

For a study of such exhibitions, the British Library's digitised newspapers (see British Newspaper Archive, BNA) are indispensable. Sometimes it is necessary to look for something other than the obvious. In my earlier search for this exhibition, I got a few results, but now that I searched for 'Pissarro' (Lucien Pissarro) and 'wood-engraving', among the results were some reviews of the First Exhibition of Original Wood-Engraving that I had not previously seen. And these reviews mention books that were on display in 1898.

A review, signed B.N., appeared in The Westminster Gazette, 22 December 1898, p. 4: 'Wood Engravings at the Dutch Gallery'. It includes this paragraph:

Next to the books of the Kelmscott series the Vale publications embody the most serious effort made in this generation at fine book-making, and as such they are, with whatever reservation, deserving of due respect. A case of these books is on view in the gallery. Neither the type, the setting, nor the decoration of these books quite satisfies my own eye, but there are many things in them one can admire. The prettiest page (to my mind) is the front page of Campion's songs, with its design of violets. The most beautiful and elaborate of the woodcut designs are certainly those made for the "Daphnis and Chloe," of which a set is framed on the walls.

The case mentioned probably was a tabletop display case, given Edith Cooper's diary entry (Michael Field, Journal, 3 December 1898 [BL Add MS 46787: f 126r]):

Under glass the Dial books are shown – The World at Auction unsurpassed among them. 

Another review, ‘The World of Art’, published in The Glasgow Herald, 5 December 1898, p. 7, mentions other books.

Other designs have been made to illustrate volumes of poems such as those by Drayton, Sir Philip Sidney, Blake, "The Rowleie Poems of Thomas Chatterton," "The Poems and Sonnets of Henry Constable." &c. The designs for the books are set in beautiful frames of engraved floral scrolls, and are of exquisite workmanship.

The term 'frames' in this quote refers to the borders Ricketts designed for the opening pages of his books.

Thomas Campion, Fifty Sonnets (1987: opening page]

The book case contained at least seven Vale Press books:

1. Michael Drayton, Nimphidia and the Muses Elizium (1896);
2. Thomas Campion, Fifty Sonnets (1897);
3. William Blake, The Book of Thel. Songs of Innocence. And Songs of Experience (1897);

4. The Poems and Sonnets of Henry Constable (1897);

5. The Sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney (1897);

6. The Rowley Poems of Thomas Chatterton (1898);

7. Michael Field, The World at Auction (1898).

The last two books had appeared in June, five months prior to the exhibition.

640. Osmaston, a Collector

Probably the best-known collectors of Charles Shannon's paintings are the wealthy mining financier Edmund Davis and his wife Mary Davis, née Halford, but there were others, such as poet Gordon Bottomley, designer and collector Pickford R. Waller, Welsh judge and legal author William Evans, artist and collector Cecil French, art collector and lawyer John Quinn, and business man and art collector Kojiro Matsukata. This list also includes the names of William Pye, May Morris, James Howden Hume, and Joseph Bibby.

There are collectors whose names are less well known, such as P.J. Ford, Ralston Mitchell, A. Arnold Hannay, H.G. Smith, whose biographies are perhaps not very comprehensive. A now obscure collector was Francis Osmaston. He owned two of Shannon's paintings.

Charles Shannon, 'Salt Water' (1902)
Oil on canvas. Usher Gallery, Lincoln
From the collection of F.P.B. Osmaston, later owned by Preston Kerrison

Francis Plumptre Beresford Osmaston (1857-1925) studied at Oxford and was called to the bar in 1885 (Lincoln's Inn), London. With his wife Eleanor Margaret Field, an active suffragist, and three children, he lived in Church Row, Hampstead; later they lived in Limpsfield and Beacon Crag, Portheleven. 

In 1901, he inherited money from his father John Wright (who changed his name to John Osmaston). The estate was sworn at £2,826. Years before, in 1884, his father had to sell their family house Osmaston Manor in Derbyshire, and separately auctioned the collection of paintings, said to include works by Rubens, Constable and Turner, and 'Monna Lizza by L. da Vinci' (Derby Mercury, 1884, see Osmaston Manor). The authenticity of the paintings could not be guaranteed and the proceeds were very modest.

Osmaston translated works by the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel and published a drama about Cromwell (1906), as well as essays about art and poetry anthologies. A critic said of him: 'Mr. Osmaston can hardly be said to write for the general reader' (The Queen, 16 January 1909). 

He also wrote a book on the painter Tintoretto, The Art and Genius of Tintoret (London: Bell, 1915), and in 1927, Charles Ricketts consulted this monograph for his research into a purchase by Sydney Cockerell [see British Library Add MS 58085, f81].* 

Osmaston also dined with Ricketts and Shannon, as evidenced by a 19 February 1904 diary entry by Ricketts:

Friday. Fry & Binyon to grub & Osmaston. Worked on plague.

[BL Add MS 58102]

Roger Fry and Laurence Binyon were regular guests. 'The Plague' was a painting that ended up at Musée de Luxembourg (now Musée d'Orsay) in Paris through Davis's mediation.

Osmaston acquired at least two paintings by Shannon and one by Ricketts:

1.

Charles Shannon, 'Salt Water' (1902). Oil on canvas, 76 x 56,2 cm. Location: Usher Gallery, Lincoln (purchased from Preston Kerrison, 1953).

2.

Charles Shannon, 'Self-Portrait (Man in a Striped Shirt)' (1901). Oil on canvas. Location unknown.

3.

Charles Ricketts, 'The Good Samaritan' (exhibited 1907). Oil on canvas. Brought in by Osmaston at the Red Cross Sale, 1915, and bought by Mary Davis. On this occasion, Ricketts called Osmaston an 'over-generous person'.**

* For this reference, thanks are due to John Aplin.

** J.G.P. Delaney, Charles Ricketts (1990), p. 290.

639. The Sower, The Reaper

An oeuvre catalogue of Charles Shannon's paintings does not exist. Often his paintings are difficult to date and there are quite a few themes that he depicted repeatedly. In addition, there are studies for paintings with the same title, and paintings with identical titles exist in larger and smaller versions.

Around five or six paintings were later destroyed, some by the artist himself, others by fire and perhaps by acts of war. On the other hand, around twenty paintings are attributed to him that are probably not his work. In short, it is not easy to oversee his extensive oeuvre. A conservative estimate is about 160-165 paintings.

Charles Shannon, "The Sower and the Reaper' (1904)
Lithograph

Shannon limited himself to a small range of subjects to which he returned again and again, in pencil sketches, lithographs, pastels, watercolours and oil paintings.

An example of a theme that Shannon used for a lithograph and for two oil paintings is taken from the Bible, John 4:36: 'And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.'

It is not the religious aspect that fascinated him. Although he was the son of a vicar, his paintings on a biblical theme such as the parable of the wise and foolish virgins were not about Christianity; Shannon was more concerned with technique, composition and colour than with the  drama or the meaning of a story. The same goes for the sower and the reaper.

Nor could realism deeply captivate him, although he initially tried to become a painter like Titian. He therefore saw no harm in depicting both the sower and the reaper in the field in one act, a scene that obviously never occurred in the farmer's daily business. Nevertheless, they were often depicted in parallel in church windows or, for example, in a work by his Dutch contemporary, the artist Jan Toorop, who depicted the two of them with their backs turned to each other.

Shannon took a different approach. He had the pair - obviously representing Life and Death - do a kind of rural dance, they stride across the field in what seems like an embrace. R.A. Walker described the image in The Lithographs of Charles Shannon (1920): 

A slightly clothed male figure resting a basket of corn on his hip is taking a handful of grain from it as he strides along. By his side the reaper with scythe on his shoulder links arms with him and speaks in his ear.

In 1904, Shannon started with a lithograph, ‘The Sower and the Reaper’. There were fifty impressions in black or in dark green.

Two versions in oil would follow, one of which can be dated to around 1915; the second has not been dated yet. These versions make an entirely different impression. The undated version most closely resembles the dark image of the lithograph.

Charles Shannon, 'The Sower and the Reaper' (undated)
Oil on panel
[Usher Gallery, Lincoln]

In this picture, the landscape is as sketchily rendered as in the lithograph, although a tree to the left and a dog to the right are more clearly visible, as is a bridge in the background. The emphasis is on the proximity of the two people - even to the extent that it appears to be a dance of death. This version is part of the collection of the Usher Gallery in Lincoln. (Over time, the painting may have become darker due to the varnish.)

Charles Shannon, 'The Sower and the Reaper' (c.1915)
Oil on panel
[Willam Morris Gallery, London]

In the circa 1915 version, from the collection of the William Morris Gallery in London, the figures are in more cheerful colours in a clearly painted landscape with a stream running from left to right, an elegant wooden bridge to the right, a cow with its head raised stands in front of a fence that closes off the field, to the left is a tree, and a church tower and barns or houses can be seen in the background on the right.

The sower is no longer half-naked but dressed in a red shirt and his companion is less sinister, more like an older brother. The painting, by the way, is considerably larger: 101,2 x 106 cm (the darker version is 61 x 62 cm).

638. The Artists as Gardeners

During World War I, Charles Ricketts corresponded with some soldiers at the front, including the young artist Thomas Lowinsky (1892-1947). While healing from an injury to his face, Lowinksy heard nightingales singing in a desolate landscape ravaged by war. 

 

Thomas Lowinsky, 'The Mask of Flora' (1931)
[Wolverhampton Arts and Heritage] 

Ricketts wrote back to him on 20 July 1918 [Typed transcription, BL Add MS 61718, ff 88-91]. All his letters to Lowinsky try to give him news from London so he can turn his attention away from the horror of the trenches for a while. This particular letter meanders from concern about Lowinsky's condition to ballet and music news from London and on to gossip about engagements and poets who seem cheaper versions of Rupert Brooke, before going back to worries about the repercussions the explosion will have on Lowinsky's health and mental condition. 

And then it's time to return to Lowinsky's bird watching before Ricketts switches to hilarious gardening tips.

I have heard the same thing about the nightingales in the sheltered woods. I should have thought it late for them to be singing; they stopped at Cranleigh about a week ago, they probably flew away. The lark does not surprise me; on a paper cover I have designed for Binyon’s book about the war I have represented France ploughing a battlefield with a lark singing over the plough. The lark is the bird of France, it has France’s gaiety, determination and persistence. The nightingale is Italy. He sings in perfection for a short breathless time. There are places in Italy where you cannot sleep owing to his song, and the scent of seringa [syringa] is thick like a clotted taste upon the lips. This year the seringa has been poor; all the flowers have been the same, for that matter, and devoured by a pest of green flies. Shannon and I have tried to keep our pots of pansies clean with an old tooth brush, and to-day I carted in the white geraniums, which were getting sodden with the rain, which reminds me of a friend who used to hold an umbrella over her Burmese lillies [lilies] when it rained.

Despite their age difference, Lowinsky would always remember Ricketts as his dearest friend.

637. Under Whose Supervision?

Charles Rickets could use several variants of his name, and did so in the colophons of the Vale Press editions. He designed the books that were printed under his supervision at the Ballantyne Press in London where a hand-press was reserved for this work.

Colophon (detail) of Milton, Early Poems (Vale Press, 1896)

The colophon of the first book, Milton's Early Poems (1896) mentions: 'Seen through the press by Charles Sturt. The decorations are designed and cut on the wood by Charles Ricketts under whose supervision the book has been printed by the Ballantyne Press'. The name Sturt was a pseudonym of Ricketts.

The second book, Walter Savage Landor's Epicurus, Leontion and Ternissa (1896), had a similar colophon text including the phrase: 'the build of the book and its decoration being by Charles Ricketts.'

The name Charles Ricketts also appears in the subsequently published volumes.

However, for Vaughan's Sacred Poems Being a Selection (1897) the name 'C.S. Ricketts' is chosen, perhaps because Ricketts thought that this form of the name fitted more easily into the cross-shaped colophon.

Colophon of Vaughan's Sacred Poems Being a Selection (1897)

The next volume, again, has the name 'Charles Ricketts': The Poems & Sonnets of Henry Constable (1897), but immediately afterwards, in Lucius Apuleius, The Excellent Narration of the Marriage of Cupide and Psyches (1897), a third variant is introduced: 'Charles S. Ricketts.'

A fourth variant, 'C. Ricketts', appears in a volume written by Ricketts himself: Charles Ricketts, A Defence of the Revival of Printing (1899). 'C. Ricketts' is mentioned as the book's designer in the colophon; binding and title page give the author's name as 'Charles Ricketts'. Does this indicate modesty? There was room enough for the full first name in the colophon.

There seems to be no consistency in format, chronology, author or genre, indicating that each colophon was rewritten (with the exception of the Vale Shakespeare volumes) and that there was no absolute preference, except that the name form 'Charles Ricketts' was favoured, and that the less popular version Charles S. Ricketts was used only twice.

In one case, Ricketts's name is not mentioned at all (except in the publisher's name Hacon & Ricketts); this concerns Maurice de Guérin's The Centaur. The Bacchante (1899). The omission, unique for Vale Press books, may have been an oversight, as the text of this colophon differed from the preceding because this was the first Vale Press book to be illustrated not by Ricketts but by his friend T.S. Moore. 

List of variants (titles have been taken from the front of the book)

Charles Ricketts [74 volumes]
[1] Milton, Early Poems (1896); [2] Walter Savage Landor, Epicurus, Leontion and Ternissa (1896); [3] John Suckling, The Poems (1896); [4] John Gray, Spiritual Poems, Chiefly Done Out of Several Languages (1896); [5] William Shakespeare, The Passionate Pilgrim (1896); [6] John Drayton, Nimphidia and the Muses Elizium (1896); [7] Thomas Campion, Fifty Songs (1896); [8] Matthew Arnold, Empedocles on Etna. A Dramatic Poem (1896); [9] William Blake, The Book of Thel. Songs of Innocence. And Songs of Experience (1897), [10] Michael Field, Fair Rosamund (1897); [11] The Poems & Sonnets of Henry Constable (1897); [12] E.B. Browning, Sonnets From the Portuguese (1897); [13] Charles Ricketts & Lucien Pissarro, De la typographie en de l'harmonie de la page imprimée. William Morris et son influence sur les arts et métiers (1898); [14-15] The Rowley Poems of Thomas Chatterton (2 volumes, 1898); [16] Michael Field, The World at Auction (1898); [17] Lyrical Poems of Shelley (1898); [18-19] The Poems of John Keats (2 volumes, 1898); [20] Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Blesses Damozel (1898); [21] William Blake, Poetical Sketches (1899); [22] S.T. Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In Seven Parts (1899); [23] Robert Browning, Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1899); [24-62] The Vale Shakespeare edition (39 volumes, 1900-1903); [63] Michael Field, The Race of Leaves (1901);  [64] Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1901); [65-67] The Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (3 volumes, 1901-1902); [68] Poems From Wordsworth (1902); [69] Ecclesiastes; or, The Preacher, and The Song of Solomon (1902); [70] The Parables (1903); [71] Michael Field, Julia Domna (1903); [72] King James of Scotland, The Kings Quair (1903); [73] Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (1903); [74] T. Sturge Moore, Danaë (1903).

C.S. Ricketts [9 volumes]
[1] Vaughan's Sacred Poems Being a Selection (1897); [2] D.G. Rossetti, Hand and Soul (1899); [3] Shakespeare's Sonnets. Reprinted from the Edition of 1609 (1899); [4] Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam (1900); [5] Alfred Lord Tennyson, Poems (1900); [6-7] The Life of Benvenuto Cellini (2 volumes, only one with a colophon, 1900); [8] Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, Urn Burial, Christian Morals, and Other Essays (1902); [9] William Meinhold, Mary Schweidler, The Amber Witch, The Most Interesting Trial for Witchcraft Ever Known [...] (1903).

Charles S. Ricketts [2 volumes]
[1] Lucius Apuleius, The Excellent Narration of the Marriage of Cupide and Psyches (1897); [2] The Sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney (1898).

C. Ricketts [3 volumes]
[1] Lucius Apuleius, De Cupidinis et Pschyces Amoribus Fabula Anilis (1901); [2] A Catalogue of Mr. Shannon's Lithographs [the title page mentions his name twice, as author and illustrator: 'Charles Ricketts'] (1902); [3] Charles Ricketts, A Bibliography of the Books Issued by Hacon & Ricketts [introduction signed: Charles Ricketts] (1904). 

636. Descent from the Cross

A painting by Charles Ricketts will be auctioned in Dreweatts's auction Old Master, British and European Art on 13 October. It is a scene often painted by Ricketts, 'The Descent from the Cross'.

Charles Ricketts, 'Descent from the Cross', c. 1909

Various stages of the passion of Christ were painted by Ricketts, such as the trial ('Christ before the People', c. 1906) and the crucifixion ('Calvary, c. 1907, and 'The Crucifixion', undated), but mostly he painted the 'Descent from the Cross'. There are at least five, perhaps even seven or eight.

1. 'Descent from the Cross', c. 1905: The William Morris Gallery,
2. 'The Deposition', c. 1910: Ashmolean Museum,
3. 'The Deposition', also called 'The Descent from the Cross', c. 1909,
4. 'The Deposition', c. 1915: Bradford Art Galleries and Museums,
5. 'Deposition from the Cross', c. 1915: The Tate.

Christ is one of Ricketts's tragic heroes, others he frequently depicted are Don Juan, Faust, The Good Samaritan, and Montezuma, an intimate circle of admired dead, a curious group of historical and fictional characters.

The third painting from my short list is now on sale at Dreweatts: oil on canvas, 92 x 71 cm, signed (verso), further signed (to stretcher verso). It probably dates from around 1909, as it was illustrated by C. Lewis Hind in 'Charles Ricketts: a Commentary on his Activities', The Studio, January 1910. In 1933, T.S. Moore reproduced the painting, stating that the then owner was unknown. It surfaced in 2014, when it was sold by Stockholm Auktionsverk. Fine Arts and Antiques, on 11 June 2014, lot no. 3388. It fetched around $11,500.

Charles Ricketts, 'Descent from the Cross', c. 1909

Opening bid is  £4,500, estimate £5,000 - £7,000.

635. The Matsukata Collection Revisited

In 2018, I wrote about some paintings by Ricketts and Shannon that had been bought by Japanese businessman Kojiro Matsukata (1865-1950) and were lost in a fire in London in 1939. Part of his vast collection ended up in the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo. I wrote: 'In the list of artists represented in this museum, the names of Ricketts and Shannon are absent.' However, in 2019 an exhibition by the museum included two works by Ricketts and Shannon, and the museum's website now lists their names. (See the Collection page of the National Museum of Western Art). 

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

These works had been on quite a journey. Matsukata began collecting art in 1916 during lengthy business trips around Europe. Works of art were shipped to Japan, but much was stored locally in England and France. From the mid-1920s, Japan was hit by recession and then a financial crisis that also affected the banks with which Matsukata's firm did business. Additional works were brought to Japan from Paris to be sold - with the artworks already in place - in a series of auctions whose proceeds were to save the company.

Japan raised the tax on luxury goods imports to 100 per cent, further complicating the shipping of his collection to his homeland. While the London collection was lost in a fire, the French collection was stored, even during World War II, with some sales to cover costs. After the war this part of Matsukata's collection was confiscated by the French state because of the nationality of its owner. Eventually 375 artworks were to be returned to Japan, but by then the collector had died.

Charles Shannon, 'The Rebirth of the Arts' (1917)
[The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo]

Two lithographic posters by Ricketts and Shannon are now in the collection. They both made a nomadic journey. One of Matsukata's first purchases was the complete series of lithographs published during the war: The Great War. Britain's Efforts and Ideals. Ricketts's poster was called 'Italia Redenta' and Shannon's was titled 'The Rebirth of the Arts' (1917). The colour lithographs measured 77,9 x 52,2 cm (Ricketts) and 77,3 x 51,6 cm (Shannon). [For reproductions, see blog 165. The Great War, an Exhibition in Wales.]

Matsukata bought the complete series of 66 items. It was purchased at the Fine Art Society, London in July 1917. They were transported to the Kawasaki Dockyard Co., Ltd. in Kobe. In 1927 they were seized by Jugo Bank, Tokyo, to be sold in the fourth Matsukata sale in Tokyo from 7–24 May 1931. They became part of a private collection in Japan, and were deposited many years later in the The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, on 25 January 2016. A year later they were purchased by the museum.

634. Ricketts and Shannon as Puppets

Helen Richie wrote a fascinating blog earlier this year about the Ricketts and Shannon collection bequeathed to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. (Read The Art Collection of Ricketts and Shannon.) One of the issues she dealt with was the attribution of the estate to Shannon instead of Shannon and Ricketts, caused by Shannon dying last. Thomas Sturge Moore wrote a letter to the museum's director to have it corrected, but that only partly happened. 

In 2019, a video was dedicated to the issue. Created by Jasmine Brady, Ana Dias, Bruna Fernandes and Lucian Stephenson, the animation reimagines a portrait by Edmund Dulac of Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon. Dulac depicted the pair as medieval saints. 

In this Museum Remix some elements have been changed. See Letter to the Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum. (Also on YouTube).

Jasmine Brady, Ana Dias, Bruna Fernandes, Lucian Stephenson,
Museum Remix participants: 
Letter to the Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum

At the start, the Dulac image is imitated; and, after thirty seconds approximately, Ricketts and Shannon hold in their hands some of their Greek treasures, a cup and a statuette. Animals, such as a hare on the ground and a bat in the sky, are taken directly from Dulac. Their faces are replaced by masks with newly drawn portraits and they are depicted as puppets with moving limbs and heads. As Moore's letter and the director's reply are read out, the couple's posture changes and at the end - instead of their art treasures - they hold each other's hands.

633. A Signature in a Vale Press Sydney

Dedication copies of Vale Press editions are quite rare. A particularly special one has two dedications written by Ricketts in a copy for Thomas Sturge Moore: 'To T.S. Moore from C. Ricketts after ten years, since the publication of Daphnis and Chloe, I know of no one else to whom I would have the same pleasure in dedicating my work'. Ricketts wrote this inscription on the last free endpaper of the 1903 edition of The Parables from the Gospels, and only then saw that he was holding the book upside down and that he had written a dedication not in the front but in the back of the book. He further inscribed it on the proper front free endpaper: 'To T.S. Moore from his affectionate old friend C. Ricketts'. (This copy is part of the Mark Samuels Lasner collection at the University of Delaware Library).

John Suckling, The Poems of Sir John Suckling
(Vale Press 1896) in a contemporary binding

Another Dedication Copy?

Soon to be auctioned is a copy of another Vale Press book with a dedication by Ricketts: John Suckling's The Poems of Sir John Suckling. It is one of the early Vale Press books, published in 1896. This copy is bound in brown leather (not designed by Ricketts) and has an ownership inscription by Eugenia Law Biddle and bookplates of Brian Douglas Stilwell and Alexander van Rensselaer (1850-1933).

The copy will be auctioned on 27 September at Freeman's in Philadelphia. It is described as a presentation copy: 'Presentation copy, inscribed on second free leaf by founder of The Vale Press Charles Ricketts: "from CS Ricketts".'

Ricketts's name in John Suckling, The Poems of Sir John Suckling
(Vale Press 1896) 

But has Ricketts indeed written this himself? I'm sceptical. 

Why does it say 'from' Ricketts, omitting the name of the recipient - this is unusual. More commonly, Ricketts wrote 'To X, from his old friend Charles Ricketts'. 

'CS' stands for Charles de Sousy - a middle name he did not frequently use after 1895 - the colophon of the book has 'Charles Ricketts'. 

Both the letter 'R' at the beginning and the 's' at the end of the name are very unusual in shape and the whole name does not seem to be written quickly as Ricketts did, but letter by letter. 

Personally, I think this signature is not genuine.

632. Writing Letters at the Keep, Chilham

In 1918, Ricketts and Shannon were granted the use of a country retreat, the Norman tower of Chilham Castle in Kent, near Canterbury. It took some time before it was habitable and Ricketts and Shannon furnished the rooms and created a garden. Soon, it proved a popular getaway for their many friends and acquaintances who often visited unexpectedly.

Oddly enough some of our own friends have taken to coming down and our catering gets complicated. Shortly we shall return to London for a short rest.

(probably October 1921)

In his letters to Muriel Lee Mathews (born De Selincourt, 1867-1938), he regularly wrote about experiences at Chilham, where many guests stayed at the actual castle that was owned by Edmund and Mary Davis. But even when the Davis's entertained a crowd, the castle grounds offered plenty of places to retreat quietly, as Ricketts wrote:

To-day Shannon and I took a flask, and had tea in a meadow near the river which belongs to the estate and is visited by no one. We found masses of little forget-me-nots and exquisite sedge and some horrid blackberries.

(18 September 1920)

Of course, their tower also offered privacy:

The Tower by moon light with tree shadows cast across it looks like an ideal setting for Tristan, it has three bogey rooms, a winding staircase leading to the surprise – a light charming 18 century room beautifully panelled from which I am writing, this is already almost finished.

(probably October 1921)

Georgian Room, The Keep, Chilham, 1920s

This room had been redecorated in the Georgian style at the beginning of the 19th century. The windows had been enlarged and looked out over the castle and the landscape around it with a regal view of the river Stour. The floor below had bedrooms and the ground floor contained a dining room and kitchen. One morning, Ricketts wrote to Muriel Lee Mathews:

[...] the hoppers howl melancholy noises in the local pubs at night and our otherwise excellent housekeeper sings “ar’t thou weary? ar’t thou languid”, etc whilst preparing breakfast, this, and a voluminous odour of fried eggs and bacon coming into the bedroom is a sign that I have to get up.

(probably October 1921).

631. Richard Le Galienne Remembers The Vale Press

The Romantic '90s by Richard Le Galienne is one of those memoirs that contains details whose reliability cannot be established. The book was published in 1926 by G.P. Putnam's Sons. By then, Le Gallienne, lived in the United States, and the 1890s were 25 years in the past.

Frederick Hollyer, portrait of Richard Le Galienne, c. 1890
[Collection V&A, London]

Le Gallienne, born in Liverpool in 1866, was the same age as Ricketts, whom he mentioned twice in his recollections, the second time as the designer of Lord de Tabley's 1893 collection of poems and the first time as the publisher of the Vale Press. It is that first passage that intrigues me.

Le Gallienne was the chief reader of The Bodley Head, and said that John Lane

was the first to apply to general publishing the new ideals in printing and binding that were already in the air, and which, before William Morris had started his Kelmscott Press, had found expression in such beautiful esoteric magazines as the Century Guild Hobby Horse, edited by Herbert P. Horne, Arthur Macmurdo and Selwyn Image, and the Dial, published under the joint editorship of Charles Ricketts and Charles H. Shannon, who were presently to start the Vale Press, one of the  earliest of those "private presses" that were just then coming into fashion, and the most influential of them all.

That last sentence is already intriguing. I know this holds true for the Netherlands: it was only after Morris's death that his influence in the Netherlands became greater than that of Ricketts and Shannon, who actually captured the imagination of the youngest generation of artists in the early 1890s. In Britain, by contrast, the influence of the Vale Press was initially very slight, and the works of the pre-Vale period were also often ridiculed.

Lane had the advantage of the coöperation of Messrs. Ricketts and Shannon in several of his early volumes [...]. There was a delightful aura of mystery about these early private presses, particularly about the Vale Press. Had Messrs. Ricketts and Shannon been alchemists, their operations could not have been veiled in a more thrilling secrecy, or the results awaited with more hushed expectancy; and specimen pages of any new book on which they were cloistrally engaged were shown privately by Lane to a favoured few as things sacrosanct, and occultly precious, with that reverent solemnity  which characterizes the true collector. The times were serous about Beauty.

I have to assume that the chronology is quite mixed up here.

The first book of the Vale Press dates from 1896 and Shannon did not collaborate on it. By that time, Ricketts was using Hacon & Ricketts as his business name, he employed staff to sell and ship the books and specimen pages really did not go to John Lane. They did, of course, for the period before that, when Lane was the publisher of books designed by Ricketts and Shannon, mainly for Oscar Wilde, but also for other authors such as Thomas Hardy.

So the facts do not add up, but intriguingly, the atmosphere of secrecy and popularity with which Ricketts's and Shannon's earlier editions were apparently surrounded remained distinctive, at least it was so memorialised a quarter of a century later. Over twenty-five years, facts had turned into myths.

630. Kathleen, Lady Kennet about Charles Shannon

Kathleen, Lady Kennet, posed for Shannon for several paintings, when she was still unmarried and known as Kathleen Bruce - see blog 628. Charles Ricketts: Statue by Kathleen Bruce (later Scott, later Lady Kennet).

Two years after her death in 1947, her second husband, Lord Kennet, published her memoirs: Self-Portrait of an Artist. From the Diaries and Memoirs of Lady Kennet, Kathleen Lady Scott (London, John Murray, 1949).

Kathleen Bruce, sitting for a portrait by Charles Shannon (1909) 

She reminisces about Charles Shannon in an account of her meeting with Captain Scott. She met Scott during a luncheon-party at Mabel Beardsley, and again, ten months afterwards, at a tea-party:

He suggested taking me home. I had not been going home; I had been going to dine in Soho with a gentle Academician, Charles Shannon, who was painting me. But without a second's hesitation I threw over my dining companion and announced myself ready to be taken home.

For ten months he was in her company, until work took him out of London.

I went back to my posing for Shannon and sat quietly hour after hour, wondering whether I could wrench myself from all my tumultuous friends and take this innocent rock as the father of my son for whom I had been searching.

"Kathleen," said Shannon, putting down his plate, "You don't love me at all to-day."

"But you've been working; you didn't want me to be chatty and interesting while you paint."

"You're not thinking about me or posing. You've got something on your mind. I know your face too well not to know that."

I smiled and was clam-like. Although this beautiful painter was thirty-eight, I was the first woman he had ever loved. I loved his work so deeply that we had become devoted friends. He painted portrait after portrait of me, and had success with them. They sold quickly for public galleries and one went to the Luxembourg. I loved sitting for him in the very exquisite surroundings of his lovely studio, and he taught me more than all the professors in Paris of design and harmony of line. There was quiet there and peace. I didn't want to ruffle that quiet content. What a lot of upheavals and severings I saw looming ahead. Yet quite clearly this healthy, fresh, decent, honest, rock-like naval officer was just exactly what I had been setting up in my mind as a contrast to my artists friends, as the thing I had been looking for. As I sat there in the quiet, temple-like studio, I made my decision.

We went out, I and the artist, to a Soho restaurant to dine. He took me home and came upstairs with me.

"Listen," I said, taking the lapels of his coat, "I'm going to marry someone."

The painter leant his back against the door.

"Whom?" he said. "Not X?"

"No, not X. You don't know him; he's not of our world at all. I'm sorry if you mind."

The gentle creature murmured, "You shouldn't be that; but I'll go home now."

And he moved hesitatingly downstairs.

Outside he walked blindly, with his head, I suppose, still swimming, and coming to the Sloane Street crossing walked straight into the traffic and under a bus. He was taken to St. George's Hospital. He was not killed, and I knew nothing about it till two days later, when it had become merely a funny little accident.

(Self-Portrait of an Artist, pp. 83-85)

Her memoirs contain a photograph of her sitting in Shannon's studio. Seated on a bench, her profile is shown in a mirror behind her; on the left are a statue and a fireplace.

629. An Unpublished Drawing for The Universal Review, 1889

Until the mid 1890s, Ricketts and Shannon out of necessity produced much work commissioned by magazines or publishers. For Harry Quilter's The Universal Review, Shannon did some drawings, and once they jointly produced the drawings for a story. This was 'Jezebel' by Julian Corbett, published in The Universal Review, vol. IV, No. 16 (August 1889).

Not all attempts led to publication and fees; some work remained in portfolio, and although Ricketts later destroyed his early work, scraps of it remained here and there. An example can be found in the collection of The British Museum. 

Charles Ricketts, design for a battle scene illustration (c.1889)
British Museum, London
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license
[with permission of Leonie Sturge Moore and Charmian O'Neil]

The drawing, 19,7 x 15,2 cm, depicts a battle scene with a chariot and half-naked figures holding shields and weapons. The pen and ink drawing, touched with blue watercolour, was acquired in 1946 (museum number 1946,0209.45).

It is quite conceivable that this drawing was also made for the story 'Jezebel'. In the story, her husband and two sons are killed or injured in a religious battle, when Jezebel introduces the gods Astarté and Baal as alternatives to the Jahveh worshipped by 'fakeers' in Carmel and the mountains of Gilead. Eventually, enemy troops come to her palace to kill her.

The chariot of the assassin rolled into the court, and not one word did she deign to utter to mitigate the savage retribution of her foe. [...] Goaded to fury with her taunts, Jehu cried to the zenana eunuchs to cast her at his feet. In a moment the queen of all that was refined and gentle in her age was struggling helpless in their rough embraces.  In another she was dashed brutally into the court below.  Backwards and forwards in a frenzy of savage hate the felon captain drove his chariot across her mangled form, and then passed on to drink to the last dregs the blood of her husband's kin. (The Universal Review, vol. IV (1889) No. 16, page 563).

This is exactly the scene Ricketts has sketched: Jezebel's injured body lies in the foreground; with her right arm she fends off an assailant. It is a dramatic and violent scene, perhaps a little too much for Quilter's magazine.

The provenance of the drawing is somewhat vague, according to the British Museum's description, but it is fairly direct. The drawing was donated by Constance Rea. This was Constance Halford (1863-1952), an artist, who in 1907 had married the painter Cecil Rea. Constance was a sister of Mary Davis (born Halford), a great friend and patron of Ricketts and Shannon, as was her husband, Edmund Davis. Constance may have acquired the preliminary drawing from Ricketts, or perhaps from another friend, such as Thomas Sturge Moore.

628. Charles Ricketts: Statue by Kathleen Bruce (later Scott, later Lady Kennet)

In the first decade of twentieth century, the artist Kathleen Bruce made a statue portraying Charles Ricketts. The bronze was exhibited in 1908, and a copy was presented to the Leeds Art Gallery by Lord Kennet in 1949. 

Kathleen Scott, 'Charles Ricketts' (c.1908)
Collection: Leeds Art Gallery
[Creative Commons License]

The statue measures 32.5 x 10.5 x 14.5 cm.

It is an usual artist's portrait in the sense that Ricketts is depicted sitting, arms and legs crossed, bent slightly forward. He is not portrayed as an active sculptor or painter, does not stand in front of his easel, does not make any of his characteristic gestures with his ever-active hands, does not have a cigarette in his hand or in the corner of his mouth; he looks contemplative, but also somewhat defeated. In fact, when this portrait was done, Ricketts was quite depressed. His paintings did not satisfy him, and, worse, his companion, Charles Shannon, had fallen in love, again, with a woman. In 1903, Shannon had threatened to leave Ricketts and marry his model Hetty Deacon; in 1906, Shannon was infatuated by the sculptor Kathleen (Liz) Bruce (1878-1947) .

He was almost twenty years older than the good-looking, artistic woman of the world, who had nursed villagers in the Balkans, had studied sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art and at the Atelier Colarossi in Paris between 1901 and 1906, and had been a pupil of Rodin. She produced statues of Ricketts and Shannon, Max Beerbohm, Harley Granville Barker, George Bernard Shaw, among many others (images can be found on the Art UK website).

Kathleen Scott, 'Charles Shannon' (c.1910)
Collection: Leeds Art Gallery
[Creative Commons License]

Shannon's portrait is very similar, although he holds a paper or sketchbook.

Shortly after her relation with Shannon, in 1908, she married Robert Falcon Scott, the Polar explorer who died in the Antarctic in 1912. In 1922, she married Edward Hilton Young, later Baron Kennet of the Dene (thus becoming Lady Kennet). In her 1938 book Homage forty sculptures were illustrated, the portraits of Ricketts and Shannon were not included.

627. An Unopened Copy of A House of Pomegranates

A number of years after the first private presses were established - concentrating on William Morris's Kelmscott Press and the first generation after that - a peculiar craze arose around rarity of these books. This was the fashion of the untouched book, the book as it came from the bindery to the collector who did not cut open the sections, but left them unopened, untouched and thus unread. It was a kind of tribute to the ideal book, where the object had become more important than the text. 

Copies of private press books were subsequently promoted in the trade as 'unopened' and examples are rare, but sufficiently well known. The curious thing is that less rare books also sometimes turn up in unopened condition, giving them a unique appeal.

Oscar Wilde, A House of Pomegranates (1891)
Cover, designed by Charles Ricketts

Last month, an unopened copy of Oscar Wilde's A House of Pomegranates was sold by Sotheby's in New York, hammer price $4,500, a substantial price for a not uncommon book that, dependent on the state and provenance, can be priced from around £500 to £2,500.

The Sotheby copy was in an excellent state: 'Original green linen backed cream boards stamped in pale red and gilt with designs by Ricketts, including a peacock, fountain, and a basket of pomegranates, spine gilt-lettered with a few small pomegranate designs, decorated endpapers; slight browning to edges, some minor spotting to lower board. Housed in custom case and folding chemise'. Moreover, this copy was 'Unopened'.

Unopened copies of this book are rare. There is one in the Norman Colbeck Collection at The University of British Columbia. Unopened copies were sold by Sotheby's in July 1925 and Hodgsons (1926) (both acquired by Quaritch), again, 'a slightly worn' copy by Sotheby's (1979) (acquired by Warrack & Perkins, obviously not this copy). There might be three or four unopened copies in all.

Originally said to be a children's book, but marketed as a luxury item, the publishers  had a thousand copies of the book printed, each priced at 21s. 

Oscar Wilde, A House of Pomegranates (1891)
Copies of the first binding (left) and second binding (right)

There are two binding states of the book and the Sotheby copy belongs to the original binding state. It has a pale yellowish green spine and the boards are covered with greyish yellow cloth. The second binding state has a darker greyish green spine and light brown cloth boards. The plates by Charles Shannon have been pasted on white linen guards in the first binding state copies. For the second binding states paper guards were used for this. There are some more differences, but these suffice to identify copies.

The Sotheby copy not only displays the colour scheme of the first binding state, but also shows the insertion of the plates as called for in the first binding state.

This implies that an early buyer of the book, during Wilde's life time, and even during Wilde's pre-prison years, acquired a copy of the book, kept it closed, and never used a knife to cut open the folded sections. For a book like this, it is astonishing, and then to have survived in this condition for more than a hundred years. Unopened, commercially produced books - this is an under-researched book historical branch.

626. The Legend of The Sign of the Dial

In 1894, the collaboration of Hacon & Ricketts as a firm involved not only the foundation of a publishing house, for which new typefaces were designed and created, but also a small shop to sell books, wood-engravings and lithographs of Ricketts, Shannon and their circle, and to organise exhibitions of their art and works by admired masters and predecessors. The shop at 52 Warwick Street was opened in March 1896. 

On the inside, in front of the storefront window, hung a nameplate 'HACON & | RICKETTS'. There is a photograph showing this signboard, but it is too vague to see how the name was painted and who painted it. Since Ricketts was the firm's typographer it seems obvious that he did it, but not necessarily.

Charles Shannon, details of recto of signboard for The Sign of the Dial (1896)
[Aberdeen Archives, Gallery and Museums]

A double-sided painted signboard hung from the facade. This was the work of Charles Shannon and it also contained the name of the firm, supplemented by that of the store on the recto side, below the names was a painting of two female figures. The woman on the left is leaning with an arm on a pedestal while reading a booklet; to her right, a woman kneels, turning her face away as she raises what appears to be a sprig of spring bluebell (a symbol of hope), to the reading woman; both are within a wicker hedge against a blue background.

Charles Shannon, details of recto of signboard for The Sign of the Dial (1896)
[Aberdeen Archives, Gallery and Museums]

The verso depicts a sun dial above the image of a grazing Pegasus near a half naked woman, both against the same background of hedge and sky.

The signboard is painted in oil on panel, 85,5 x 48,8 cm, and was purchased by the Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums in 1949.

The text on the signboard reads:

HACON·&

RICKETTS.

THE·SIGN of

THE·DIAL.

[The characters 'O' and 'F' are intertwined]

Within each line, words are separated by a period (placed at half height), except in the third line where the last word is a ligature of the letters O and F. Each character is drawn separately, which is clearly demonstrated in lines 3 and 4 that both begin with the word THE, but the width of these words are different. In line four, the individual letters of the word THE are connected. Each line is aligned with both margins.

The lettering is totally different from that of The Dial magazine of which Shannon drew the first cover and Ricketts that of the other four issues. Ricketts would not have respected the rigorous separation between the lines and, for example, would have allowed the tail of the character R to continue with a graceful arc in the space below.

Looking again closely at the blurred photo of the store (Bookselling, 1896), it can be seen that the lines of the other signboard are filled out differently, although it is not clear where the ampersand is. Its authorship cannot be ascertained, but it may be that this sign was put up there right at the opening and Shannon's sign was a slightly later addition.