DOI issue:
Nr. 143 (February 1905)
DOI article:Wood, T. Martin: The etchings of W. Monk
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20711#0048
IV. Monk
architecture ; he has wished to know her intimately,
not seeking his subject in the lines of stately
buildings, or in the black shadows of old courts,
not coming to his work always in a romantic
mood, but sometimes in one that finds pleasure in
the matter-of-fact incidents that during the day
give to the city an unhistoric as well as a historic
interest. Traffic is stopped, busmen and drivers,
angry and sarcastic, are sent a long way round to
get at a simple destination. Business is delayed,
trysts broken, and the artist is delighted watching
the great black pitch-boilers blocking up the street
and the workmen going through their semblance of
industry. The nefarious 'pleasure that our etcher
takes in this elaborate plot on the part of the
workman, gives to his work its character from the
point of view- of subject.
Traditional Oxford has given another side to his
work. Oxford has enlisted the services of her
admirer in the design for the University Kalendar,
a design that has been contributed to by the old
masters of water-colour. Oxford has never really
received sufficient homage from the modern etcher.
Mr. Monk has done many good etchings in
the right spirit, but the incongruities of college
architecture present innumerable doorways and
windows which, treated as the windows and
doorways of Venice have been, still offer an
etcher in the right mood an unexplored field,
though Oxford has been drawn so many times
in other ways.
Always in search of the picturesque, Mr. Monk's
home is in a town which seems as if it had been
left stranded as time hurried by. Art beginning as
naturally at home as charity, sighs with greater
impatience for further conquests, though it is
oftenest found at its best when it goes least far afield.
The little town is giving up to Mr. Monk gradually
all its favourite secrets, and the landscape round it
brings him back to where he started in etching :
for, in spite of his intimacy with London, streets
and houses have never really supplanted in his
mind lanes and hedges, though his art has admitted
in the former their decadent fascination. It is
strange that art should exercise, in its merest
technicalities, a sway over the imagination. There
must be quite a lot of people for whom a board
outside a suburban public-house with the word ale
on it cannot have such inner meaning in its beauty
as a tree in its right surroundings, and yet this
" ADVERTISEMENTS "
32
FROM AN ETCH INC BY W. MONK
architecture ; he has wished to know her intimately,
not seeking his subject in the lines of stately
buildings, or in the black shadows of old courts,
not coming to his work always in a romantic
mood, but sometimes in one that finds pleasure in
the matter-of-fact incidents that during the day
give to the city an unhistoric as well as a historic
interest. Traffic is stopped, busmen and drivers,
angry and sarcastic, are sent a long way round to
get at a simple destination. Business is delayed,
trysts broken, and the artist is delighted watching
the great black pitch-boilers blocking up the street
and the workmen going through their semblance of
industry. The nefarious 'pleasure that our etcher
takes in this elaborate plot on the part of the
workman, gives to his work its character from the
point of view- of subject.
Traditional Oxford has given another side to his
work. Oxford has enlisted the services of her
admirer in the design for the University Kalendar,
a design that has been contributed to by the old
masters of water-colour. Oxford has never really
received sufficient homage from the modern etcher.
Mr. Monk has done many good etchings in
the right spirit, but the incongruities of college
architecture present innumerable doorways and
windows which, treated as the windows and
doorways of Venice have been, still offer an
etcher in the right mood an unexplored field,
though Oxford has been drawn so many times
in other ways.
Always in search of the picturesque, Mr. Monk's
home is in a town which seems as if it had been
left stranded as time hurried by. Art beginning as
naturally at home as charity, sighs with greater
impatience for further conquests, though it is
oftenest found at its best when it goes least far afield.
The little town is giving up to Mr. Monk gradually
all its favourite secrets, and the landscape round it
brings him back to where he started in etching :
for, in spite of his intimacy with London, streets
and houses have never really supplanted in his
mind lanes and hedges, though his art has admitted
in the former their decadent fascination. It is
strange that art should exercise, in its merest
technicalities, a sway over the imagination. There
must be quite a lot of people for whom a board
outside a suburban public-house with the word ale
on it cannot have such inner meaning in its beauty
as a tree in its right surroundings, and yet this
" ADVERTISEMENTS "
32
FROM AN ETCH INC BY W. MONK