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William Walcot R.E., Hon.R.I.B.A.  
(Odessa 1874 – 1943 Ditchling, Sussex)
An Architect-Etcher and quintessential artist of the Modern British Etching Boom.

Walcot was a cosmopolitan. His father, an Englishman, met and married his Russian mother, the daughter of a wealthy landowner, while visiting that country. Born in the Ukraine, close to the Black Sea, Walcot’s childhood was spent travelling with his parents in Spain, South America, France (Bayonne and Bordeaux) and Belgium until his mother and younger brother returned to Russia and Walcot was sent to school. He was educated at Amiens and then in Paris.

William Walcot, c.1919 Photograph reproduced courtesy of the publishers, H.C. Dickens, from their monograph on the artist.

Though he went ‘home’ to Russia at the age of 17, Walcot returned to France to study architecture with Gaston Redon (the brother of Odilon), and at the Beaux Arts. He completed his training in Moscow at the Imperial Academy of Arts, graduating in 1897, and practised as an architect in Moscow (he was co-designer of the city’s Metropole Hotel) until 1905. In 1904 in a sad interlude he and his first wife, an Irish governess and lady-in-waiting at the Russian court, went to the Isle of Wight for her to convalesce from tuberculosis, but she died there. This perhaps motivated his ensuing permanent departure from Russia. He settled in London in 1906.

Though he would later work for the LCC planning department and was made an honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Walcot did not practise as an architect after he came to live in England, though architecture remained his love and inspiration. His successful employment as an architectural perspectivist, envisioning in presentation watercolours what a finished building would look like from other architects' plans, determined his career change to artist, confirmed by the Fine Art Society commissioning him in 1907 (as they had Whistler nearly three decades earlier) to visit Venice. The results of this trip were exhibited at the FAS in the January 1908 one-man show of Watercolours of London & Venice, the first of five successive and successful annual/biennial early shows with the Society. Watercolours of London & Rome, in 1909, was followed by Watercolours of London, Venice & Rome, 1910; Watercolours of Ancient Rome, London & Oxford 1912; and Etchings by William Walcot in 1914.

Despite the title of the first Fine Art Society exhibition, Watercolours of  London & Venice, the catalogue entries include one etching The Library of St. Marks and the 1912 show (Watercolours of Ancient Rome, London & Oxford) included two etchings among the exhibits, The Giudecca, Venice  and La Bacchante et le jeune Faune. The 1910 catalogue had a notice at the end that “An exhibition of Original Etchings is now on view in the Lower Gallery”, which may also have included Walcot etchings.

Over the next two decades, essentially the years of the British Etching Boom, etching was a prime concern of Walcot.

“Palazzo Pesaro”, 1913

Almost all Walcot’s early exhibits at the Royal Academy annual Summer shows, from his first participating in 1908, were etchings. And it was his three exhibits in 1913, Palazzo Pesaro, Venice; A Tragedy by Sophocles in the days of Hadrian; and At the House of a Patrician which drew the attention of the publishers H.C. Dickins and led to the rewarding contract with them which continued until 1925.

Walcot’s individual and unique style as an etcher was developed without formal training. However he and Frank Brangwyn became close friends and it was perhaps Brangwyn, Walcot’s senior by seven years, who had already been an etcher for seven years when Walcot arrived in London in 1906, who introduced his new friend to the medium. Brangwyn, as would Walcot, also broke the accepted ‘canons’ of Modern British etching to work on plates of unconventionally large dimensions and used zinc rather than copper for these large plates. Brangwyn too had been born abroad and was widely travelled. He was in Venice in 1907, perhaps to visit the Venice Biennale where his large etching Santa Maria della Salute (21¼ x 31¾ inches, 540 x 805 mm) had won a gold medal.

Walcot too was a painterly etcher, concerned only with the final effect of the plate, and who delighted in large scale. Like Brangwyn he employed zinc for his large plates, a metal both cheaper than copper and easier to work. He defined the principal lines of the composition in drypoint or etching but created tone by a variety of means in addition to aquatint, from roughening the surface of the plate with a roulette or mezzotint rocker to painting nitric acid directly onto selectively grounded areas of the plate and exploiting foul biting. Versatile, Walcot could also work on miniature plates as small as only 2 or 3 inches. All his smaller, more traditionally sized plates, were etched on copper.

Several of Walcot’s etchings relate to or are anticipated by watercolours. The earliest plates, which tend generally to be large, are more concrete than the later often smaller works which are more impressionist in style. In the early plates the figures have feet while in the later ones what one might define as an architect’s notational ‘shorthand’ curtails the legs in points, the figures are not important in themselves, they add life and give scale to the buildings.

Detail from “Piazza di Pietra, Rome” c.1908-10	Detail from “Newcastle Central Station” 1922

Finish was disregarded when he felt he had successfully conveyed a true impression of the view he was seeking to express.

A parallel impressionistic truth to the spirit in creating convincing images of the living actuality and atmosphere of ancient civilizations informed Walcot’s Roman Compositions as he categorised them, his pictorial ‘restorations’ of ancient architectural ruins to functioning buildings.

A Court of Justice

Rome in particular captured his imagination, a city layered with cumulative architectural accretions since Etruscan days. Walcot saw the ruins and envisioned them in their original imperial splendour and daily use by their inhabitants, in the same way that he created watercolour architectural perspectives for the architects of his own day, Lutyens, Blomfield &co.; and indeed Salaman records that Walcot made plans to scale of the existing ruins from which to work. He saturated himself in literary sources, Duruy’s Histoire des Romains, Gibbon’s Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, the Letters of the younger Pliny. He had a studio in the British School at Rome and was party to the archaeological scholarship and discoveries of the day. The Director of the School of Rome, as well as writers and historians Marius & Ian Ivor, W. R. Lethaby, W. G. Newton, and Max Judge wrote learned articles to accompany the illustrations of such large-scale compositions as A Court of Justice; The Atrium of the House of a Patrician; A Tragedy by Sophocles; The Baths of Caracalla in the Dickins 1919 monograph. Marius Ivor wrote the Introduction to the 1918 James Connell & Sons exhibition catalogue and commented “Archaeology is history; art is experience, and must always have reference to the modernity of the past”.

Walcot’s delight in Rome was remembered by the architect Percy Thomas PRIBA who recalled in the RIBA Journal a holiday he had enjoyed with the artist when he “spent several weeks with Walcot in his beloved Rome. Whether it was exploring some of the lesser known buildings and ruins, or jolly dinner parties at the ‘Concordia’, or trips to Frascati, where he persuaded a peasant boy to sing in the ancient amphitheatre…”

Walcot’s family told Timothy Lingard of Walcot’s vivid imagination, believing himself reincarnated from classical times and even dressing in a toga and sandals at home and eating reclining on a couch in the Roman manner. It is not surprising that the French publisher Editions d’Art Devambez commissioned him to etch the illustrations to Flaubert’s Hérodias (a biblical tale of Judaeo/Roman times) in 1928 and the same author’s Salammbô (set in ancient Carthage) in 1936.

Several of his distinguished contemporary etchers produced plates that recorded their travels across The Channel but Walcot’s “Roman Compositions” were unique, both in their theme and scale. Brangwyn etched large plates of Venice and elsewhere in Italy, but usually bustling 20th century views - and did not etch any Roman subjects.

Even the main historical example, Piranesi, who was equally passionate about Roman remains, and also an etcher working on a monumental scale, recorded the actuality of the ruins as he witnessed them in the 18th century rather than imagining them fully restored and functioning as buildings as they would have appeared when originally built in ancient times.

Walcot’s one-man exhibitions were more occasional after his contract with the publishers H.C. Dickins, who both published and distributed the editions to retail galleries. H.C. Dickins himself had died in 1906 but the business was continued by his two sons, Harold W. and Alec C., aged at that date only sixteen and fourteen; and only 23 and 21 respectively in 1913 when they met the 39 year old Walcot. During the period they were associated, 1913-1924/5, Dickins issued editions from at least 97 of Walcot’s plates. Responding to demand edition sizes quickly rose, from an average of 50 - 100 impressions up to the end of the first World War, to 400 at the peak of the Etching ‘Boom’ and the height of Walcot’s success in the 1920’s.

Alec Dickins married an American girl and settled in New York where he opened the Dickins US office. Harold Dickins escorted Walcot on a trip to New York in 1923 where he etched at least a half a dozen plates of Manhatten. The Dickins brothers had been publishing additional editions for export to the United States since the end of the First World War.

Detail from “Trafalgar Square”, 1924. One of the five plates comprising ‘The London Set’

There had been a tradition for etchings to be published in ‘sets’ which went back at least to Whistler and is familiar from the oeuvre of such as D.Y. Cameron, Lumsden etc. A number of Walcot’s etchings were also issued this way, the Edinburgh Set, 1918; the Venice Set, 1920, the Arteries of Gt. Britain, 1922; the New York Set, 1923-4; the London Set, 1924; and the Spanish Set, 1924-5. However, the individual plates within a ‘set’ varied considerably in dimensions and were sometimes published in consecutive years. From the outset retail galleries usually sold them as individual plates and today it is only occasionally that a complete set is found still together.

Though one-man shows were less frequent than at the outset of his career Walcot did continue to exhibit throughout the Dickins years. Indeed he had a major one-man show in April 1918 at the London gallery of James Connell & Sons in Old Bond Street Paintings, Watercolours & Etchings by WW. The show included 40 etchings.

The same year Walcot was elected an Associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers (RE); and Fellow in 1920. The year 1919 saw the publication of the folio monograph Architectural Watercolours & Etchings of W. Walcot issued by H.C.Dickins (London & New York) and Technical Journals Ltd (London).

William Walcot c.1921 A wood engraving by Robert Gibbins

In 1919 the Fine Art Society showed Paintings & Watercolours by William Walcot where “A collection of Mr. Walcot’s Etchings will be shown on application”. Paintings, Etchings & Watercolours by WW followed five years later in 1924. Meanwhile Walcot’s etchings are also catalogued in several Fine Art Society group shows of the period: Summer Exhibition of Original Etchings July-Sep 1922; Original Etchings by Fifty Artists of Repute Dec 1922; Rare original Etchings by Bone, Brangwyn, Cameron, Strang, Walcot, Whistler, Zorn etc, May 1923; Original Etchings by Leading Artists (a selection from the Society’s portfolios) Nov 1923, Spring Exhibition of Original Etchings by Leading Artists, Nov 1924.

Walcot also exhibited etchings regularly at the annual salons of the R.E.; the R.A.; the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts; and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

These years marked the height of the etching ‘boom’, reflected in 1923 in the institution of the annual volumes of Fine Prints of the Year. Walcot’s etchings were illustrated that year, and in the volumes for 1925, 1927 and 1928.

Following the break with Dickins in 1925 Walcot had a one-man show in December of that year at the Beaux Arts Gallery, Bruton Place near Bond Street, Recent Watercolours & Etchings by WW; with a catalogue introduction by the well known critic Konody. His etchings were also included in two group shows at the Beaux Arts: Modern Etchings, Oct 1926, and were to the forefront in Original Engravings, Etchings, & Drypoints by younger Contemporary Gravers in April-May 1929.

Detail from “Antony’s Palace”, 1928

From about 1927-1929 The Fine Art Society, who had issued some of Walcot’s earliest etchings, again took up publishing his recent plates. His work was included in two group shows at the FAS Etchings by leading Artists in December 1927 and Recent Etchings in October 1928. Also in 1928 Walcot had his last one-man show at the Society Impressions of Egypt. Pictures & Etchings by William Walcot FRIBA, RE, in 1928. It was particularly the Roman associations in ancient Egypt which attracted Walcot and Antony in Egypt, in particular, drew him again and again as a theme.

With the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and the ensuing Depression in the 1930’s, the market for etchings, which had developed a somewhat speculative character, dwindled. Many etchers gave up the technique entirely. The uncertain market is reflected in Walcot’s exhibiting record. There were no further shows of his etchings. His last exhibits at the R.E. were in 1931 and after 1935 he is no longer listed as a member. At the Royal Academy Walcot showed his last etching in 1930. From 1931 to 1938, the final year he exhibited at R.A., the exhibits are all drawings or paintings. The two later Beaux Arts one-man shows in 1934 & 1937, were respectively both devoted to, in the first instance watercolours, and in the second, gouaches, paintings of London.

Scaffolding, suggesting new buildings or window replacement, a detail from “Marsham Street, Westminster”, a Crittall commission for 1936

However Walcot did continue to etch, if at a reduced level, and was fortunate in finding two important patrons of his etching in the 1930’s. Brothers, Francis Henry Crittall (JP), who died in 1934, and Sir Valentine, were eminent industrial engineers and directors of the Crittall steel windows construction company. First Francis Henry and after his death Sir Valentine Crittall commissioned annual etchings of London scenes for private distribution to family, friends and clients at Christmas. Henry Rushbury had benefited from their patronage in the later 1920’s and they commissioned at least six, and probably nearer to ten, etchings from Walcot between 1930 and 1938. Several of these subjects include building sites or recently erected buildings and one wonders if perhaps these buildings had Crittall windows.

In this difficult period Walcot also had work with the LCC Department of Planning and eventually received a civil list pension. In the 1940’s, perhaps, as a reaction to the times, Walcot was ill. Brangwyn put him up in a cottage in Ditchling which he owned (the elderly Sir Frank Short would be the next occupant) and visited him in the evenings to relieve his mistress and his daughter who watched over him to prevent his hurting himself. In 1943 Walcot was transferred to the local hospital where a fall from a window ended his life.

“Winchester”, c.1920-23

This collection of etchings, of which the majority are from a single private collection, covers the full range of Walcot’s etched work – architectural views of the cities of New York, Vicenza, Venice, Florence, Naples, Paris, Burgos, London, Oxford, Cambridge, York, Winchester, Newcastle, Edinburgh and his unique contribution to Modern British etching - the reconstructed ancient Roman and Egyptian ‘Compositions’.

The paper on which Walcot’s etchings are printed is mainly typical of the period. The large etchings are on stout wove papers. The smaller etchings are generally, in the earlier years, on fine hand-made laid papers, superseded with the passage of years by wove paper. Frequently there is no watermark but certain impressions or in some cases whole editions have manufacturers’ proprietory watermarks. These are noted for individual impressions in the catalogue entries. ‘Whatman’ paper is usually also watermarked with the date of its manufacture, which can be useful in some instances for dating plates which are not recorded. The etching itself will usually date to within a couple of years of the watermarked date.

Most of Walcot’s etching plates are not signed but virtually all the impressions are signed by him in pencil.

Walcot's Signature

Illustrated below are some examples of William Walcot's signature, as it appears on a selection of his works. As the years progressed his signature grew larger, more florid, and less legible.

c 1908	c 1913
1920's	1930's

Catalogue Raisonné

It is intended to establish an on-going fully illustrated e-Catalogue Raisonné of Walcot’s etchings. This is currently a work-in-progress, but can be viewed here.

In the meanwhile, a printed exhibition catalogue is available (Price £5 - see Catalogues section for details) that provides the basis for this enlarged Walcot web exhibition. Among appendices at the back it provides an unillustrated chronological listing of Walcot’s etched œuvre.

New acquisitions of etchings by Walcot will be added into this exhibition even after it has been archived.

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The 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.

		Lower Broadway, New York Etching, 1924
		Park Avenue Etching, 1923
		Downtown Manhattan from the East River, with a distant view of the Woolworth Building Etching and aquatint, 1924
		The Remains of the Forum of Minerva, Rome Etching, 1908
		Piazza di Pietra, Rome Etching, 1908-10
		A Corner of the Pantheon, Rome Etching & Drypoint, 1914
		St Peter’s Rome Etching & Drypoint, 1914
		Vicenza Etching and drypoint, c1925
		La Rotonda Etching, c1925
		The Doge’s Palace Etching and drypoint, 1920
		Doorway to the Doge’s Palace Etching and drypoint, 1915
		Venice – Courtyard of the Doge’s Palace Etching and drypoint, with aquatint
		San Marco, Venice Etching & drypoint, 1920
		The Library of St. Mark’s Venice Etching, drypoint and aquatint, 1920
		Piazzetta, San Marco, Venice Etching & drypoint, 1914-19
		Giudecca No.1, Venice Etching & drypoint, 1913
		Giudecca No.2, Venice Etching, 1913
		Palazzo Pesaro Etching with aquatint, 1913
		The Boatyard, Venice Etching, 1914
		The Baptistry, Florence Etching with aquatint, 1920
		Arc San Carlo, Naples Etching & drypoint, 1921
		Café de la Paix, Place de l’Opéra, Paris Etching, 1913
		L’Opéra, Paris Etching
		L’Arc de Triomphe Etching and aquatint, 1917
		The Bull Ring, Seville Etching & Drypoint, 1924
		Segovia Bridge, Madrid Etching, 1924
		Burgos Cathedral Etching & drypoint, 1924
		The Forth Bridge Etching, drypoint & aquatint, 1918
		The Arteries of Great Britain Set of five etchings, 1922
		The Clyde Etching & aquatint, 1922
		The Forth Etching and drypoint, 1922
		The Tyne Etching and drypoint, 1922
		Newcastle Central Station Etching and drypoint, two impressions, one hand coloured, 1922
		York Minster – the West Front Drypoint, 1923
		The Mersey Etching, 1922
		Winchester Drypoint, 1923
		The Ashmolean, Oxford Drypoint, c1920-23
		The Entrance to Queen's College, Oxford Etching & aquatint, c1910-13
		King’s College, Cambridge Etching and drypoint, 1916
		London Etching and drypoint, 1920
		The Thames Drypoint & Etching, 1916
		The Thames from Southwark Bridge Etching, 1916
		The Thames from Waterloo Bridge Etching, 1916
		Changing London Euston Road at St Pancras Etching, aquatint & rockerwork, 1937
		Marble Arch Etching, c1931
		The Quadrangle, Bart’s Hospital Etching, drypoint & aquatint, 1938
		Corner of Berkeley Square Etching and aquatint, c1935-7
		Fleet Street Etching, 1931
		Ludgate Hill Etching, aquatint & drypoint, 1921
		St Paul’s Cathedral – the North-West corner of the West Front Etching & drypoint, 1914
		St Paul’s Churchyard Etching & drypoint with rockerwork
		Cornhill & Royal Exchange Etching & drypoint, c1933-35
		The Bank of England Original etching
		Covent Garden Original etching
		The Strand Etching, 1924
		St Mary-le-Strand Original etching, 1913 or 1915
		Charing Cross – The Statue of Charles I Etching & drypoint, 1919
		Horseguards Etching, 1924
		The National Gallery & St Martin’s-in-the-Fields Etching & drypoint
		Trafalgar Square Etching, drypoint & aquatint, 1924
		Trafalgar Square (east side) Etching, drypoint & aquatint, 1933
		Piccadilly Circus Etching, drypoint & ‘aquatint’, c1920
		Regent Street – the Quadrant Etching, 1917
		Piccadilly Circus & Glasshouse Street Etching & aquatint, c1933-35
		Marsham Street, Westminster Etching & aquatint, 1936
		Westminster Abbey Etching, drypoint & aquatint, 1919
		Westminster Drypoint, c1923
		Westminster Bridge Etching & aquatint
		Chelsea Old Church Etching and drypoint, 1924
		The Banqueting House, Whitehall Etching & drypoint
		King Charles in Whitehall Etching with aquatint, c1929
		The Trial of David III before Edward I, Parliament of Shrewsbury, 1283 Etching & aquatint, 1934
		Kom Ombo Drypoint, etching & aquatint, 1928
		The Caravan Drypoint, etching & aquatint, 1928
		The Temple of Edfu Etching, drypoint and aquatint, 1928
		The Sacred Fair, Egypt Etching, drypoint & aquatint, c1918
		Caesar in Egypt Etching, drypoint & aquatint, c1926
		Antony in Egypt Etching, drypoint & aquatint, c1926
		Antony’s Palace Etching, drypoint & aquatint, 1928
		Romans in the Forum Etching, 1917
		The Frigidarium of the Baths of Caracalla Etching, drypoint & aquatint, 1918
		The Caldarium of the Baths of Caracalla Original etching & aquatint, c1915-19
		A Performance in the Colosseum Original etching with drypoint & aquatint, 1916
		A Tragedy of Sophocles Original etching with drypoint & aquatint, 1916
		A Court of Justice Etching, drypoint & aquatint, 1913
		The First Wooden Temple of Jupiter or Restoration of one of the first Temples of Jupiter Capitolinus, Rome Etching, drypoint & aquatint,1918
		Villa Quintilii Drypoint, etching & aquatint, 1921
		The House of Sallust Etching, drypoint & aquatint, 1920
		Temple of Romulus Etching & aquatint, 1927
		The (so-called) Stadium of Domitian on the Palatine Hill Etching, drypoint & aquatint, 1919
		Atrium of the House of a Patrician Etching, drypoint & aquatint, 1915
		The Emperor Hadrian entering Salonica Etching, drypoint & rockerwork, 1918
		The Trojan Horse Original etching & aquatint, 1914.
		A Greek Lady Drypoint and aquatint, with etching and rockerwork, 1913
		Babylon Etching & aquatint, 1918