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PALMER'S
LEGACY
The
neo-romantic pastoral tradition in the 20th & 21st
centuries.
Introduction
Etching
in 19th century England, up to about 1860, was
practised as an independent creative medium only
by a few self-taught artists, usually for their
own pleasure rather than publication.
In
the early years of the century some of the Norwich
School, lead by John Crome, had etched a few landscape
plates, inspired by Dutch 17th century artists,
and John Sell Cotman had etched and published series
of architectural etchings.
A
few British artists who had studied in Rome,
where the technique had not been eclipsed by
reproductive engraving, also took up etching
in a modest way. As did some gentry or aristocrats
as amateurs.
British
professional printmaking at the time tended towards
mixed engraving methods – line, stipple
and mezzotint – for the purposes of reproducing
paintings, or etching and aquatint, frequently
hand-coloured, for sporting subjects, flowers,
caricatures and other decorative prints.
A
growing renewed interest in original etching
as the decades progressed had been reflected
in the founding of The Etching Club in 1838,
and it was the invitation to join that Club that
had lead Samuel Palmer to take up etching in
1850 .
By
the demise of the Etching Club in the 1880’s
the etching ethos had changed.
Seymour
Haden, professionally a surgeon, and an amateur
etcher, sympathetic to the French etching ‘revival’,
had resigned from the Etching Club and established
in 1881 the Society of Painter-Etchers , soon to
be given Royal approval and renamed the Royal Society
of Painter-Etchers. Haden attracted membership
by an initial ‘open’ exhibition, inviting
artists from France and America as well as Britain
to participate. By the beginning of the 20th century
the Etching Revival had become an Etching Boom.
Haden
had disagreed with the old Etching Club both
in its literary tendencies and stylistic approach
of close working of the whole plate. An admirer
of Rembrandt and contemporary Parisian etching,
Haden in his earlier etchings favoured, like them,
an open, airy line contrasted with blank areas
on the plate. His younger American brother-in-law,
Whistler, with whom Haden worked closely in 1857-58,
when both artists first seriously embarked on etching,
had at this time been a reluctant member of the
short-lived Junior Etching Club, where a more sketchy
linear style had also held sway. Through the following
decades Whistler would give British etching an
impetus and by the early 1900’s (he died
1903) he was an influence on many younger etchers
and etching in general had become a popular activity.
From the later years of the 19th century art schools
had been established with dedicated teachers of
etching. Rembrandt and Van Dyck were exemplars,
as well as the teachers themselves, initially Frank
Short and Alphonse Legros (both in Whistler’s
circle) and later Malcolm Osborne, Alfred Bentley,
Stanley Anderson and Robert Austin, all taught
by Short.
Intensely
worked and reworked etchings like those of Samuel
Palmer were generally out of vogue. (Graham Sutherland
recalling his student days in the etching class
at Goldsmiths’ commented that As we
became familiar with Palmer’s later etchings,
we bit our plates deeper. We had always been warned
against overbiting. But we did overbite and we
burnished our way through innumerable states quite
unrepentant at the way we punished and maltreated
the copper... .)
Frederick
Griggs was the first artist to ‘rediscover’ Palmer.
By coincidence Griggs’ discovery of the Cotswold
town of Chipping Campden, where he settled in 1904,
had a significance for him similar to that of Shoreham
for Palmer.
From
1912 when he took up etching, Griggs’ admiration
for Palmer is apparent, though even from the first
plates, architecture (rather than shepherd and
flocks) dominates the landscape. Within a decade
Griggs was a mentor for a younger generation of
etchers and together with Martin Hardie and Frank
Short reawakened recognition for Palmer's genius.
Frederick
L. Griggs R.A., R.E.
Hitchin 1876 - 1938 Chipping Campden
Griggs
greatly admired Palmer's etchings. Both artists shared a visionary imagination,
a technical enjoyment in close-worked plates and were deeply religious. Griggs
wrote in a letter to R A Walker in 1925, "My love for the things Samuel Palmer
loved is my first & last love, & I know no other artist who loved them so well,
and whose love showed forth in his work. How could a certainly 'affinity' be
avoided in such a case?"
Griggs
had no formal instruction in the technique of
etching, he was trained as an architect, but
his early etchings (especially 'Maur's Farm' and 'Priory
Farm'), share with Palmer's the intensely worked surface and a warm glimmering
through of light, as they also express a deeply felt poetry of nostalgia. Griggs
was thirty-six and already established as an architectural draughtsman when he
turned seriously to etching; Palmer was an established watercolour painter of
forty-five before his friend and fellow artist Charles West Cope encouraged him
to take up etching.
By
contrast to Palmer, Griggs found his inspiration
not in the pastoral verse of Virgil or Milton
but in the glories of gothic architecture and
the mysteries of the Catholic faith which designed
and built them. Griggs converted to Catholicism
in 1912, the very year he began to etch in earnest.
On several of his plates (though sometimes removed
in later states) he etched apposite quotations
from the Bible.
As
an older but contemporary physical presence and
example, Griggs was a powerful intermediary in
transmitting Palmeresque Pastoralism to the next
generation of etchers, several of whom he welcomed
to Campden for demonstration printings from their
plates at the Dover's Press. And his contact
with A H Palmer (then living in Canada) resulted in the new editions of five
of Samuel Palmer's etchings.
Joseph
Webb A.R.E.
Ealing 1908 - 1962 London
Webb
began to etch in 1927, under the supervision
of Henry Daniel, during his Scholarship years
at the Patrick Allan-Fraser of Hospitalfield
School of Art in Arbroath. On his return to London
in 1928 Webb continued to etch under Hubert Schröder at Chiswick School of Art.
Webb
had a deep feeling for the English countryside.
In the summer of 1928 he toured Gloucestershire
and followed the Wye Valley Walk - looking for motifs
to paint and etch - and from the evidence of some of the etchings, selected subjects
that reflected the etchers he admired, such as Rembrandt (Webb's 'The Horse Doctor',
1928) and Griggs ( both Webb's etchings of the castle at Chepstow).
The
following year Webb visited Campden and Griggs
demonstrated his printing techniques on Webb's 'Rat Barn' and 'Dream Barn' plates, as well as enthusing
over the emotional power of Palmer's etchings. Webb shared Griggs' love of old
architecture. Most of his plates have an architectural theme, several envision
imaginary buildings with an intense religious mysticism, but determined by Theosophy,
rather than Catholicism, in the case of Webb.
Like
Palmer, Webb obviously responded to the poetry
of Milton and quoted lines from Il Penseroso on
the preparatory drawing to his etching 'Lincoln,
Sunrise'.
Stanley
Roy Badmin R.E.
Sydenham 1906 - 1989 Bignor, Sussex
Though
he grew up in a London suburb, Badmin learnt
to love the English countryside on family holidays
visiting his grandfather, a carpenter and cabinetmaker
in the Somerset village of Holcombe in the Mendips.
Badmin
took up etching as a postgraduate of the Royal
College of Art in evening classes at the College
in 1927-28. His tutor, Robert Austin, introduced
him to his own dealer, the XXI Gallery, (who
had also published Griggs' etchings from 1915-1920) where Sutherland
and Drury were contemporary student exhibitors.
(It
is a sad postscript coincidence that in 1938,
by which time like many other artists, including
Griggs, Badmin had abandoned etching as unremunerative,
he was commissioned by Macmillan to produce the
additional illustrations needed for Highways
and Byways in Essex, which the ailing Griggs
had been unable to fulfil.)
Goldsmiths'
School Etchers
The
now much-celebrated Goldsmiths group, students
at the University of London Goldsmiths' College
School of Art, based at New Cross, comprised
Graham Sutherland, Paul Drury, William Larkins,
Edward Bouverie Hoyton and Robin Tanner. In a
short span of years in the middle and late 1920's
they produced a small body of intensely romantic
Pastoral prints idealising the English countryside,
giving expression to their heightened emotional
feel for Nature, looking back to Samuel Palmer,
at a period when this centuries old rural way of
life was disappearing under the pressure of modern
agricultural developments.
They
were part of a larger re-awakening to the visionary
art of Palmer.
In
1925 Lawrence Binyon's book,
The Followers of William Blake: Edward Calvert,
Samuel Palmer, George Richmond & their
Circle, was published. Binyon was Keeper at the
British Museum.
Bouverie
Hoyton in conversation in 1974 with Joe Graffy
of the Penn Print Room remembered that Fred Richards,
a tutor at Goldsmiths, had given a lecture, with
slides, on 19th century etching, which included
Palmer's 'Herdsman's Cottage' as
issued in the 1880 edition of Hamerton's Etching & Etchers and that William Larkins (the only member of the
group not actually to produce pastoral subjects)
had bought a copy of the book in the Charing Cross
Road. Graham Sutherland recalling the time, in
the Introduction to William Weston's 1973 catalogue
The English Vision, describes the impact of looking
at the impression of Palmer's 'The Herdsman's
Cottage' "I was amazed at its completeness, both
emotional and technical .(and)
that the complex variety of lines could form a
tone of such luminosity. . It
seemed to me wonderful that a strong emotion, such
as was Palmer's, could change
and transform the appearance of things."
In
1924 Griggs had contacted A H Palmer, the son
of the artist, then resident in Canada, who sent
him eight of his father's uncancelled plates
to print from. Griggs consulted with Frank Short,
Professor of Engraving at the Royal College of
Art & his friend Martin Hardie, Keeper of Prints & Drawings
at the adjacent Victoria & Albert Museum, who was
planning a Palmer exhibition. A H Palmer dubbed
them 'The Trio'. They oversaw the printing of editions
of 50 to 75 impressions from five of the plates.
Each impression had an engraved triangle together
with the Trio's
pencil initials in the lower margin. They were
published by the Cotswold Gallery, London, to coincide
with Hardie's Palmer retrospective exhibition at
the V & A in 1926, Exhibition of Drawings,
Etchings and Woodcuts by Samuel Palmer and Other
Disciples of Blake.
Bouverie
Hoyton also observed that Griggs had "stimulated
what was obviously a creative renaissance of thought
and feeling and attitude towards pastoral work".
Sutherland
and Drury visited Griggs in 1926. A particularly
significant year for Sutherland who was, like
Griggs, a convert to Catholicism and would be
accepted into the Roman Catholic Church in December
that year. Hoyton remembered encountering Griggs
in the printing room at the Royal College of
Art in London and discussing rags used for wiping
plates. "He was very kind in a purely practical
way".
Graham
Sutherland
London 1903 - 1980 Trottiscliffe, Kent
Sutherland
trained as an etcher at Goldsmiths’ from 1920-25. He had his first
exhibition in 1924, while still a student. At this
period his etchings show a variety of influences
and dialogues with the established masters of etching
such as Rembrandt and Whistler. The eight plates
he produced in the years 1925 to 1928, passionately
intense rural idylls, show the full impact of Palmer
and a transformation in Sutherland’s style.
Those of 1926-28, in their themes and titles, also
reflect his conversion to Roman Catholicism in
1926.
By 1929 he felt he had reached a cul-de-sac with
the rural idyll and the subsequent few etchings
are informed by elements of menace, tragedy and
surrealism. In 1930 he turned to painting and had
effectively abandoned etching by 1932, but for
two semi-abstract landscapes of Wales in 1938.
His later printmaking would use the medium of colour
lithography.
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Graham
Sutherland
Lammas
Etching, 1926 |
Paul
Drury P.R.E.
London 1903 - 1897 Nutley, Sussex
Though
predominantly a portrait artist, in his final
two years at Goldsmiths, 1925-6 and up to 1933,
Drury produced five landscape plates influenced
by Palmer including his masterpiece in the genre, 'September'.
Edward
Bouverie Hoyton
Lewisham 1900 - 1988 Newlyn
A
contemporary student of Paul Drury and Graham
Sutherland (who remained a life-long friend) at
the Goldsmiths' College School of Art, Hoyton won
the Prix de Rome in Engraving in 1926, after several
attempts, and was taken up by The Fine Art Society.
He spent three years in Rome. Morgan Hayes, was
one of several Devon subjects from this period,
published while he was away in Rome. He was the
only member of the group to experience Italian
light and the Roman Campagna which had so influenced
Palmer and before him the 17th century etchers
of idyllic landscapes.
Robin
Tanner A.R.E.
Bristol 1904 - 1988 Kington Langley, Wiltshire
Tanner
alone of the Goldsmiths School group retained
in his later etchings the pastoral vision of his
student years. Tanner studied etching at evening
classes at Goldsmiths after he had taken up his
first teaching post in 1924. He had encountered
the work of Griggs for the first time at the 1923
R.E. annual exhibition. Tanner's
first etching was made in 1926 and he visited the
big Palmer exhibition that year too at the V. & A.
In 1928 he settled permanently in Wiltshire to
etch full time, acquiring his own press. The crash
in the market after 1929 forced him back to teaching,
and he had little time to etch, even more so after
his appointment in 1935 as an Inspector of Schools.
He had produced twenty-three plates when he abandoned
etching in 1946. But in 1970, in his retirement,
he took up etching again, reworking and re-editioning
some of the early plates and producing twenty-eight
new ones.
He
and his wife Heather loved the Wiltshire countryside
and in the village of Kington Langley, found
their equivalent of Palmer's Shoreham and
Grigg's
Campden, an idyll celebrated in their book Wiltshire
Village.
In
a taped message for the opening of his last exhibition
Tanner summed up his work.
I
regard what I have etched as the natural overflow
of my deep love of the Wiltshire countryside
where most of my life has been spent. . When
people call me a "Samuel Palmerish
pastoral etcher" I feel bound to assert that my
work is also a protest at the ruthless raping of
the earth today. Of course I am an idealist. My
etched world is an ideal world, a world of pastoral
beauty that could still be ours if we did but desire
it passionately enough, instead of poisoning it.
A
Continuing Tradition
Though
Modern British ‘pastoral’ etching
is most associated with the artists trained at
the Goldsmiths’ School, Palmer has continued
to inspire later artists into the 21st century,
and not just in this country as is witnessed by
the example of Ron McBurnie.
George
Tute R.E., S.W.E.
Born Hull 1933
Tute
trained as an artist at Blackpool and the Royal
Academy Schools 1948-58 until his National Service.
He worked in an RAF Exhibition and Display Unit
in London, which was opposite the Central School
of Arts & Crafts, and so was able
to attend evening classes. There, on a course given
by Gertrude Hermes, he discovered wood engraving,
a medium he made central to his expression. He
has worked both as an illustrator and on independent
prints. He was the first Chairman of the present
Society of Wood Engravers, having been instrumental
in its revival in 1984.
Ron
McBurnie
Born Brisbane, Australia 1957
McBurnie
trained at Queensland College of Art 1975-78
and since 1985 has taught printmaking and book
arts at the James Cook University School of Creative
Arts in Townsville, Queensland. Though in the Antipodes,
he is very aware of and responsive to European
traditions of etching.
He
has commented -
"The Romantic etchings began as a result of my
growing interest in the work produced by a small
group of British artists known as 'The Ancients'.
I had just purchased an etching entitled The
Herdsman's
Cottage by Samuel Palmer .
In
it I saw possibilities for bringing a sense of
wonder and mystery back into the landscape where
I lived."
And
by coincidence, when Samuel Palmer's The
Herdsman's
Cottage was published by P G Hamerton in The
Portfolio in 1872, Palmer had written in a
letter to Hamerton,
"Who
knows, however, but that The Portfolio may
span the globe that its etchings may sparkle
in Australia ?"
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Ron
McBurnie
Eurydice
Etching & Roulette, 1997 |
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Kit
Boyd
Born 1969
Boyd
studied the visual arts at the University of
Wales Aberystwyth 1988-91. After graduating,
work in London included nine years with the Campaign
to Protect Rural England, which chimed with his
artistic concerns of "our relationship with
the landscape and our place in nature .". In 2006
Boyd moved back for a couple of years to the Welsh
marches to concentrate on his creative work.
"I
work within the British romantic tradition. Recent
work has been inspired by Samuel Palmer's visionary
period in Shoreham."
"I lived in the rolling hills
of the mid-Wales/Shropshire borders for two years
before my move back to London and the vision of
Samuel Palmer is alive - the moon rises above sheep
fields and the lush vegetation twines darkly in
old drovers' lanes".
Bibliography
- Chris
BEETLES: S R Badmin and the English Landscape.
(Collins, 1985)
- Bristol
Museum & Art Gallery, Dept of Fine Art: George
Tute. Wood Engraver. Retrospective Exhibition
1986
- Francis
Adams COMSTOCK: A Gothic Vision: F L Griggs
and his Work. (Boston Public Library & The
Ashmolean, 1966, reprinted 1978)
- Gordon
COOKE: Graham Sutherland. Early Etchings (Cooke,
1993)
- Gordon
Cooke: Samuel Palmer. His Friends and Followers (Fine
Art Society 2011)
- Robin
GARTON: The Catalogue Raisonné of
the Prints of Paul Drury, 1903-1987 (Garton & Co.1992)
- Richard
T Godfrey: Printmaking in Britain.
(Phaidon 1978)
- Kenneth
Guichard: British Etchers 1850-1940.
(R Garton 1977)
- Ian
Mackenzie: British Prints. Dictionary & Price
Guide. (Antique Collectors’ Club,
1987)
- Robert
MEYRICK: Joseph Webb the lights that flit
across my brain. (An Aberystwyth touring
exhibition catalogue, 2007)
- Jerrold
Northrop Moore: F L Griggs The Architecture
of Dreams. (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1999)
- Jerrold
Northrop Moore: The Green Fuse. Pastoral
Vision in English Art 1820-2000. (Antique
Collectors’ Club 2007)
- William
Weston: the English Vision. Etchings and Engravings
by Edward Calvert, William Blake, Samuel Palmer,
Graham Sutherland, Frederick Griggs and Paul
Drury. Introduction by Graham Sutherland. (1973)
Return to the
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Palmer's
Legacy Exhibition
To
view the entire Exhibition print-by-print,
click this link and
then follow the prints through the Gallery
by using the "next print >" and "< previous
print" navigation
buttons.
Alternatively, you can select an individual
print from its thumbnail or title in the list
below.
However,
the exhibition is probably best viewed, in
context, by clicking on the thumbnails within
the related text in the left column of this introductory
page. Each individual print in the exhibition
has a link back to the Introductory text in
the 'crumb trail' at the head of every page.
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Frederick
L. Griggs
St Botolph's
Bridge (No.1)
Etching,
1917 |
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Frederick
L. Griggs
St
Botolph’s Bridge (No.2)
Etching, 1936-37 |
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Joseph Webb
Chepstow
Etching, 1928 |
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Stanley
Roy Badmin
The
Field Corner
Etching, 1928 |
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Graham Sutherland
The
Sluice Gate
Etching, 1924 |
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Graham
Sutherland
Lammas
Etching, 1926 |
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Paul Drury
September
Etching, 1928 |
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Edward Bouverie Hoyton
Morgan
Hayes
Etching, 1927 |
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Robin Tanner
The
Road Maker (ii)
Etching, 1928 |
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Robin
Tanner
The
Hedger
Etching, 1928 |
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Robin
Tanner
The
Meadow Stile
Etching, 1970 |
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Robin
Tanner
The
Plough
Etching, 1973 |
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Robin
Tanner
The
Old Thorn
Etching, 1975 |
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Robin
Tanner
December
Etching, 1978 |
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George Tute
Bather
in a Landscape
Wood engraving, c1979 |
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Ron
McBurnie
Eurydice
Etching & Roulette, 1997 |
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Ron
McBurnie
Full
Moon over Sandgate
Etching & Aquatint, 1990 |
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Kit Boyd
Man on a Laptop (Early Morning)
Etching & Aquatint, 2012 |
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Kit
Boyd
Night
on the Lane
Etching & Aquatint, 2011 |
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Kit
Boyd
The
Shining Path
Etching & Aquatint, 2012 |
See
also the associated exhibitions:
Poetry
Made Visible
The Complete Etchings of
Samuel Palmer
Palmer's
Peers. The Etching Club
A brief account of The Etching Club,
1883-1885, and a list of its publications, with
an exhibition of a selection of etchings by other
members of the Club, and by contributors to the
publication English Etchings, 1881.
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