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IMAGES
OF CITY & RIVER
 A
stock catalogue to accompany a selling exhibition organised
as a fringe event of the City of London Festival July
1988
A
celebration of London and the Thames in its rich
diversity through prints which reflect both the changing
role of the river and the response to it by artists.
In
the 17th & 18th centuries the river was a flourishing
life line, the main artery of communication, a broad
channel full of busy craft; the city an impressive
backdrop of towers and steeples. The city streets were
narrow so that the water offered the easiest, if not
the only, means of a general view. London was unique
in having its port at the very centre of the city,
the Pool of London lying immediately below London Bridge.
Until the opening of the new docks further east in
the 19th century, all shipping unloaded at the Pool.
As the city grew and spread west, artists portrayed
reaches higher up the Thames at Battersea and Chelsea
and beyond. The print trade moved west too, from St.
Paul’s to St. James and Bond Street, when the
leading 19th century publishing firms of Colnaghi and
Ackermann were established. Artists recorded the new
buildings that rose after the Fire, the opening of
new bridges and other new building developments, frost
fairs when the river froze and other popular entertainments.
As the commercial docks moved east and London declined
as a port from the 1850’s, artists captured and
made picturesque the dereliction of the waterfront,
just before the building of the embankment. A desire
to record contemporary life with an impressionist interest
in the effects of sunlight and mist gave way in the
early 20th century to a focus on pictorial construction
complimented by an architectural theme.
The
catalogue concludes with a selection of views elsewhere
in Britain and prints of Paris, Amsterdam, Hamburg,
Venice and other European ports, New York and Shanghai.
Short
introduction of British topographical printmaking
A
national school of printmaking was slower to develop
in Britain than on continental Europe, so that the
earliest views of London were made by or after foreign
artists and were generally engraved and published abroad.
The most famous view was C. J. Visscher’s huge
prospect on joined sheets, made in 1616; yet there
is no evidence that Visscher ever visited London in
person. This removal from source naturally led to inaccuracies
and some delightfully fanciful skylines. The first
artist to make extensive studies of the city of London
directly from nature was Wenceslaus Hollar. The Bohemian
etcher settled in London for long periods and married
an English woman.
Only
in the closing years of the 17th century and the early
decades of the 18th did English publishing firms such
as Overton, Bowles, the Bucks, establish themselves in
response to the growing interest and demand for printed
views. The founding of the Society of Antiquarians
in 1717 encouraged the trend for accuracy and resulted
in encyclopaedic collection of views of different parts
of the country. A new invention mid- century, the optical
diagonal viewing machine, led to a craze for ‘optical’ or ‘perspective’ prints.
A forerunner of the modern slide show, but without
projection, the combined use of mirror and convex lens
gave the hand-coloured engravings the appearance of
three dimensions, the linear geometric system of perspective
enhancing the illusion of recession.
The
discovery of the new printing processes of aquatint
and lithography happily coincided with the rise of
the English school of watercolourists at the turn of
the century. Many artists such as Sandby, Turner, Westall
and Shotter Boys attempted original printmaking as
a complimentary art form to their watercolour painting.
Aquatint
dominated the early decades of the 19th century. Alderman
Boydell, print publisher and Lord Mayor of London,
whose successful business in historical and genre stipple
engravings crashed when the French Revolution, followed
by the Napoleonic wars, put an end to his export market,
was the first to recognise the potential of hand-coloured
aquatints for the home market. The technique of aquatint
lends itself particularly to printing in one or
two colours, requiring a minimal of finishing in hand-applied
colour washes. Rudolf Ackermann, who settled in London
in 1795, became the main promoter of fine colour plate
publication when lithography superseded aquatint.
The
revival of interest in etching as an original artist’s
medium, intimated by the Norwich School at the beginning
of the 19th century, and encouraged by French example,
came to fruition in the 1860’s. The British print
scene again became cosmopolitan. British etchers were
published and exhibited in France and America, as well
as at home; European, American and Australian artists
settled in London or visited and etched the city.
The
British School in the late 19th century, polarised
stylistically around the two colossi of Whistler and
Haden, both trained in Paris. While Whistler, open
to a wide variety of influences, looked to Meryon,
the Barbizon artists, Japanese woodcuts, Hollar and
Dutch 17th century masters, Haden was inspired more
single-mindedly by the historical etchings of Rembrandt
and the contemporary French work of Bracqumond and
the members of the Sociétédes Aquafortistes.
Relatives and early colleagues, they developed into
inveterate enemies, as so often in Whistler’s
relationships.
In
addition to Whistler and Haden, the various intaglio
printing firms and newly established London art schools
was also influential contributing factors. Delâtre,
printer to the Société des Aquafortistes
in Paris and leading intaglio printer of his day, who
initiated many French artists into etching, was invited
to teach at the School of Engraving at South
Kensington (today the R.C.A.) in 1863. Frederick Goulding
(an apprentice with the commercial lithographic printers
Day & Son) attended these classes and later became
the leading British printer of etching plates, printing
for Whistler until they fell out. Like Felsing, who
held a similar position in Berlin, Goulding often signed
the impressions he had printed, in addition to the
etcher of the plate. Frank Short was a seminal influence
on several generations of students at the Royal College
of Art.
By
the end of the 19th century Glasgow artists were held
in international repute. The Glasgow School of Art
trained an interesting group of etchers, including
Cameron, Bone and Dodd. In their architectural subjects,
although ultimately founded on Whistler’s 'Thames
Set' and Meryon’s 'L’Eaux-fortes sur Paris',
they developed a highly individual style, and a strong
interest in drypoint. By the first decade of the new
century they were acclaimed as masters of drypoint.
McBey, Macleod and Robertson also developed as etchers
in this Scots ambience.
Large
quarto paper bound catalogue containing 202 items,
fully illustrated.
(Currently
out of print)
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Artists
included in the catalogue:
- Addams
C.
- Anderson
S.
- Auerbach
A.
- Basket
C.H.
- Basset
A.
- Batchelar
T.
- Beauvais
- Béjot
E.
- Bella
S. della
- Benoist
P.
- Beurdely
J.
- Bickham
G.
- Blampied
E.
- Bone
M.
- Bormann
E.
- Bowles
J.
- Bowles
T.
- Boys
T.S.
- Bracquemond
F.
- Brangwyn
F.
- Briscoe
A.
- Brouet
A.
- Bruycker
J. de
- Buck
S. & N.
- Cameron
D.Y.
- Campion
frères
- Carter
F.
- Chatelain
J.B.C.
- Cherau
J.
- Cole
B.
- Dodd
F.
- Dudley
R.
- Dumont
J. le Romain
- Evershed
A.
- Farington
J.
- Fellowes
W.D.
- Friedrich
A.
- Gautier
L.
- Greaves
W.
- Guillaumin
A.
- Haden
F.S.
- Havell
F.J.
- Heriot
R.
- Heumann
G.D.
- Heyman
C.
- Hollar
W.
- Holloway
C.Q.
- Hook
J.C.
- Ireland
S.
- Jacques
F.
- Kermode
W.A.
- Krommer
H.
- Lalanne
M.
- Lami
E.
- Larkins
W.
- Latenay
G. de
- Lepère
A.
- Macleod
W.D.
- McBey
J.
- Meidner
L.
- Menpes
M.
- Meryon
C.
- Moore
A.P.
- Morin
E.
- Nevinson
C.R.W.
- Nittis
G. de
- O’Connor
H.
- Overton
H.
- Pennell
J.
- Prust
E.C.
- Pugin
A.C.
- Pyall
H.
- Rayse
- Roberts
J.
- Robertson
D.
- Robins
W.P.
- Roussel
T.C.
- Rowlandson
T.
- Ruprecht
A.
- Rushbury
H.
- Scott
S.
- Shepherd
T.H.
- Short
F.
- Silvestre
I.
- Simon
T.F.
- Sloan
J.
- Smart
D.I.
- Sparks
N.
- Stadler
J.C.
- Stone
H.M.
- Tissot
J.J.J.
- Ury
L.
- Vahrenhorst
P.
- Visscher
C.
- Vondrous
J.C.
- Walcot
W.
- Way
T.R.
- Webb
H.G.
- Westall
W.
- Whistler
J.M.
- Wilkinson
N.
- Wyllie
W.L.
- Zeeman
R. (Nooms)
- Zeising
W.
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