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COLLECTORS'
CHOICE
 Old
Master Prints; Modern British Prints:
two approaches to print collecting.
With
a brief history of earlier print collecting as well
as of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers & the
affiliated Print Collector’s Club.
The
majority of the prints in this catalogue come from
two private collections, which reflect contrasting
approaches to print collecting. One is an art historian’s
traditional wide ranging collection of mainly old master
and 18th & 19th century material, important for its
subject matter as well as the printmaker who produced
it. The other was in its day contemporary print collecting,
in the main from the annual exhibitions of the Royal
Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers (the R.E.) during
the years c1920-40 and through the affiliated Print Collectors’ Club,
which offered lay members an annual presentation print
selected from three alternative plates etched by members
of the R.E.
Print
collecting started almost as soon as artists began
to make prints. In the late 15th century, aside from
woodcuts bought from abbeys and fairs as aids to devotion, ‘fine’ engravings
by Mantegna, Dürer, Lucas van Leyden &c were
acquired directly from the artist and prized as original
printed drawings.
The
inherent market potential in multiple impressions quickly
widened the scope of printmaking in the early 16th
century to embrace reproductive as well as original
graphic work. The Renaissance & Mannerist ages’ awareness
of their own great contemporary masters, and their dialogue
with newly recovered classical antiquity, fed the demand
for printed images. Specifically pictorial engraving
workshops were established, followed shortly by print
publishing houses, first in Italy, soon imitated in northern
Europe.
Printmaking
was central to the mainstream art of the period, appreciated
both in its own right as an expression of disegno and
also as a means of reproduction. Artists such as Raphael
or Parmigianino, Brueghel or Martin de Vos, not necessarily
themselves original printmakers, produced designs specifically
to be engraved. In parallel, professional engravers
borrowed and adapted motifs from other artists and
the antique to create their own ‘original’ images.
Connoisseur audiences enjoyed the recognition of theme
and variation and the enhancement of meaning this could
suggest. Art apprenticeship in any discipline almost
invariably involved copying prints of the work of the
great masters; the frequency of accidental oil paint
stains on old master prints is testimony to their use
in artists’ studios. Prints both reflected and
spread the intellectual concerns of their day and their
easy portability ensured their wide transmission. The
firm of Hieronymous Cock, the first important publisher
in the Low Countries was called In der Vier Winden (to
the Four Winds); aptly signifying the important role
of prints in disseminating pictorial motifs throughout
Europe.
By the end of the 17th century collecting had become
a universal passion among the educated classes in France,
Holland (where Rembrandt had an extensive collection),
Italy and England (where Pepys and the artist Peter Lely
were collectors). At this period prints were not generally
framed and hung, but kept in cabinets or trimmed to the
platemark and mounted into albums for close inspection.
Collections were variously classified by artist and/or
by such subjects as the Bible, classical mythology, natural
history, portraits of the celebrated, geography/topography/landscape,
modern customs, erotica, architecture and ornament.
 The
prints offered here reflect a similar range of interest,
embracing master works, religion and iconography, portraits,
architecture and the antique. There is an emphasis on
Mannerist artists, represented by some rare examples
which when they were acquired anticipated the recent
interest in and reassessment of the School of Fontainebleau
or etchers such as Battista d’Angolo Torbido del
Mora. Several of the items derive ultimately from important
18th and 19th century English collections, notably those
of Sir Joshua Reynolds, John Barnard, William Sharp and
the Revd J Burleigh James. Sadly condition sometimes
leaves a little to be desired.
The
R.E. (Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers)
was founded in 1880, at the instigation of Sir Francis
Seymour Haden, to provide a platform for original etchings
at a period when the Royal Academy did not readily admit
etchers to membership or even artists’ etchings
to its open Summer Shows, though reproductive engravings
of Academicians’ paintings were accepted. From
1882 the R.E. held annual shows of members’ etchings,
in which only Fellows or Associates of the Society could
participate.
As
the Etching ‘Revival’ flourished and
blossomed into the Etching ‘Boom’ the Society’s
scope and aim was widened to include first, ironically,
reproductive prints, earlier scourged by Haden, which
prompted the resignation in 1903 of two important Fellows,
William Strang and D Y Cameron. Reproductive prints were
mainly the province of Short (though he was also a fine
original etcher and mezzotint engraver), soon to be elected
second President, in succession to Haden. The amendment
also made way for including old master prints in the
annual shows despite the artists’ necessary non-affiliation.
Later, members’ original wood engravings were also
accepted in the annual shows. Though relief prints rather
than intaglio, they were, like copper line engravings,
worked with the burin. The collection offered here includes
a number of wood engravings, though etchings predominate.
In the R.E. shows too, original etchings predominated,
as had always been the intention.
Members
of the R.E., particularly through the 1920s-30’s,
read like a rollcall of Modern British etching: Anderson,
Austin, Badmin, Blampied, Brangwyn, Briscoe, Brockhurst,
Drury, Griggs, Laura Knight, Menpes, Nixon, Osborne,
Rushbury, Short, Soper, Squirrell, Sutherland, Tunnicliffe,
van Abbé, Walcot. Many of these are represented
in the prints offered here. There were also notable exceptions
to membership. From the early days Whistler, due to a
falling out with Haden, was not a member. Strang and
Cameron resigned early on. Bone, Dodd, McBey and Nevinson
eschewed membership. The Society had a bias towards traditional
craftsmanship and through the successive lengthy presidencies
of Short and Osborne, both also successively Professors
of Engraving at the Royal College of Art, a strong membership
recruited from the R.C.A. trained as graphic artists
rather than as painters. When Graham Sutherland’s
work moved towards modernism (surrealism) it was rejected
from exhibition with the Society.
The
prints accord with the principle themes associated
with Modern British printmaking of the period, landscape,
urban and architectural scenes (often reflecting European
travel), the sea and figure compositions. Such etchings
appeal because of the artist and aesthetic but also through
the individual collector’s tangential associations.
It is an interesting example of the laws of probability
in the question of personal preference if one assumes
that most of the 300 members of the Print Collectors’ Club
received the first print of their choice from those on
offer each year, even though only 100 impressions were
printed of each of the three presentation plates in any
year.
The
Print Collector’s Club (PCC) was established
by the R.E. in 1921 for those who wished to be associated
but were not practising printmakers, or not elected members
of the Society. Limited to 300 members (often with a
waiting list until the Depression struck) the Club offered
advice to members, demonstration evenings and an annual
Presentation plate, issued only as an edition to members
of the PCC. Subscribers selected from commissioned plates
by three different members of the R.E. each year. This
catalogue concludes with one collector’s complete
selection of presentation prints, from the Club’s
foundation in 1921 until 1942; only lacking a print for
1941.
Published 1997
52 pages, 158 items described and illustrated in black
and white.
(UK
Price: £10, International orders: £15)
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Artists
included in the catalogue:
- Aachen
H von
- Amato
F
- Anderson
S
- Aquila
F F
- Austin
R S
- Badmin
S R
- Bartoli
P S
- Basket
C
- Bellicard
J C
- Bittner
N
- Boissens
C D
- Bone
M
- Borbone
M
- Bormann
E
- Brangwyn
F
- Briscoe
A J T
- Buckels
A
- Callot
J
- Carracci
A
- Caylus
Comte de
- Champaigne
P de
- Claude
Lorrain
- Collaert
A
- Compardel
- Cort
C
- Cotman
J S
- Cruikshank
G
- Cuitt
G
- Degas
E
- Delaune
E
- Delleaney
G
- Drury
P
- Duflos
F P
- Dürer
A
- Durnly
A
- Dyck
A van
- Earlom
R
- Edilinck
G
- Exley
J R G
- Fagiuoli
G
- Fairclough
W
- Fiammingo
P
- Flint
W R
- Floris
F
- French
School
- Garzi
L
- Gellée
C
- German
School
- Giulio
Romano
- Goltzius
H
- Goodens
S
- Greenwood
J F
- Griggs
F L
- Hall
O
- Hardie
M
- Hill
J
- Hoare
W
- Honervogt
J
- Houston
R
- Hughes-Stanton
B
- Italian
School
- Janes
N
- Jones
R Ray
- Kneller
G
- Komjati
J
- Lack
M
- Lasinio
C
- Lee
S
- Leibl
W M H
- LeSueur
N
- Lombart
P
- Lorrain
C
- Lucas
van Leyden
- Lucas
M
- Lumsden
E S
- Macbeth-Raeburn
H
- Malton
T
- Maratta
C
- Marriott
F
- Matham
J
- Menpes
M
- Mills
A S H
- Moring
R
- Morley
H
- Moro
B Angolo del
- Moro
M Angolo del
- Nattes
J C
- Neeffs
J
- Nixon
J
- Parmigianino
- Perelle
G
- Piranesi
G B
- Platt
J G
- Pontius
P
- Quick
W M R
- Raphael
- Raverat
G
- Ray-Jones
R
- Rembrandt
- Reni
G
- Riley
H A
- Robertson
P
- Robins
W P
- Romano
G
- Rossini
L
- Rushbury
H
- Sadeler
F
- Short
F
- Simon
J
- Soper
G
- Spanish
School
- Sparks
N
- Spranger
B
- Squirrell
L R
- Stock
A
- Strang
I
- Sutherland
G
- Taylor
C W
- Tod
A M
- Tunnicliffe
C F
- Vincent
G
- Vos
M de
- Vreint
F van
- Walcot
W
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