DOI Heft:
No. 311 (February 1919)
DOI Artikel:Salaman, Malcolm C.: The woodcuts and colour-prints of Captain Robert Gibbings
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21357#0020
The IVoodcuts and Colour-prints of Captain Robert Gibbings
dwelling-room may be adorned at comparatively where he was severely wounded, and later he
rmall cost by original schemes of colour and served for a time m Salonica. But his artistic
design devised for printing with delil erate impulses were not dulled by campaigning, and
decorative intention from wood-blocks, metal some of the prints reproduced here show how
plates, or lithographic stones. alertly responsive was his eye to pictorial sug-
We may, of course, expect to see a very gestion for the decorative woodcut. That the
considerable extension of lithographic colour- wood-block is apparently the medium most
printing, especially when Mr. Ernest Jackson's sympathetic to his artistic expression, he dis-
experiments have developed its further artistic covered with the help of Mr. Noel Rooke,
possibilities. I would urge that the time is himself a wood - engraver of distinguished
opportune likewise for the wider reach of the accomplishment. But Captain Gibbings had
decorative woodcut designed for printing with commenced his art studies in his native Cork
facility in two or three colours, and so capable under the direction of Mr. Harry Scully, R.H.A.,
of being sold at a popular price. Its artistic a landscape painter, from whom he got a valuable
quality and s:gnificance need be no less because training in colour and tone, and living and work-
it may defy the collector's deside atum of the ing much out-of-doors, he learnt to see with
limited edition, so dear and profitable to the that breadth and simplicity of conception which
dealers, and offer itself to an
unrestricted popular demand. If
its pictorial content be of pleasing
appeal, its intrinsic decorative
value may insidiously raise the
standard of artistic taste in the
home. I commend this demo
cratic suggestion to our leading
exponents of the wood - block
colour-print. Not that I would
wish to deny the connoisseur the
enjoyment of the charming and
artistic prints of Mr. William
Giles, Captain Verpilleux, Mr.
Morley Fletcher, Mr. Charles
Mackie, and Mr. Allen Seaty, but
it would be good to see their
accomplished art and craftsman
ship widening its sphere of appeal,
and decorating the homes of the
workers, as it well might do, with
the charm of significant design
and simple colour-harmonies.
This desideratum one may find
fulfilled in the colour-prints of
Captain Robert Gibbings, a young
Irish artist, whose expression
through the woodcut promises so
much in the direction I have
just indicated that The Studio
hastens to introduce it to its
readers. Barely out of his period
of studentship when the war
called him from art to military
service, as an officer in the Mun- " the llandovkry castle" (sunk june 1918). from a wood-
ster Fusiliers he fought in Gallipoli, block print in three colours by robert gibbings
dwelling-room may be adorned at comparatively where he was severely wounded, and later he
rmall cost by original schemes of colour and served for a time m Salonica. But his artistic
design devised for printing with delil erate impulses were not dulled by campaigning, and
decorative intention from wood-blocks, metal some of the prints reproduced here show how
plates, or lithographic stones. alertly responsive was his eye to pictorial sug-
We may, of course, expect to see a very gestion for the decorative woodcut. That the
considerable extension of lithographic colour- wood-block is apparently the medium most
printing, especially when Mr. Ernest Jackson's sympathetic to his artistic expression, he dis-
experiments have developed its further artistic covered with the help of Mr. Noel Rooke,
possibilities. I would urge that the time is himself a wood - engraver of distinguished
opportune likewise for the wider reach of the accomplishment. But Captain Gibbings had
decorative woodcut designed for printing with commenced his art studies in his native Cork
facility in two or three colours, and so capable under the direction of Mr. Harry Scully, R.H.A.,
of being sold at a popular price. Its artistic a landscape painter, from whom he got a valuable
quality and s:gnificance need be no less because training in colour and tone, and living and work-
it may defy the collector's deside atum of the ing much out-of-doors, he learnt to see with
limited edition, so dear and profitable to the that breadth and simplicity of conception which
dealers, and offer itself to an
unrestricted popular demand. If
its pictorial content be of pleasing
appeal, its intrinsic decorative
value may insidiously raise the
standard of artistic taste in the
home. I commend this demo
cratic suggestion to our leading
exponents of the wood - block
colour-print. Not that I would
wish to deny the connoisseur the
enjoyment of the charming and
artistic prints of Mr. William
Giles, Captain Verpilleux, Mr.
Morley Fletcher, Mr. Charles
Mackie, and Mr. Allen Seaty, but
it would be good to see their
accomplished art and craftsman
ship widening its sphere of appeal,
and decorating the homes of the
workers, as it well might do, with
the charm of significant design
and simple colour-harmonies.
This desideratum one may find
fulfilled in the colour-prints of
Captain Robert Gibbings, a young
Irish artist, whose expression
through the woodcut promises so
much in the direction I have
just indicated that The Studio
hastens to introduce it to its
readers. Barely out of his period
of studentship when the war
called him from art to military
service, as an officer in the Mun- " the llandovkry castle" (sunk june 1918). from a wood-
ster Fusiliers he fought in Gallipoli, block print in three colours by robert gibbings