DOI issue:
No. 311 (February 1919)
DOI article:Salaman, Malcolm C.: The woodcuts and colour-prints of Captain Robert Gibbings
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21357#0023
The Woodcuts and Colour-prints of Captain Robert Gibbings
PENNEFATHEfc
light and shade, or a cluster of house-roofs in a
snow-storm ; or has he a circle to fill with
figure, landscape, or marine, for book-plate or
tail-piece. Dublin under Snow, an impression
from the mess-room window of the Royal
Barracks, is an engaging print, remarkable for
the ingenuity with which the white roof-shapes
are disposed so as to carry the eye away into
. an illusion of distance and variety of plane, in
a true wintry atmosphere cleverly suggested by
these flat contrasting tones of black and white.
It is, however, in his use of colour-printing
in connexion with wood-blocks that Captain
Gibbings may specially interest us at the
moment, for he is aiming at just that decorative
book-plate, from a wood-block print charm of effect by simple means with which,
by robert gibbings as T }10pe> the artistic colour-print may win its
way into the homes of the people in the coming
one recognizes in his prints. After two years time of social reconstruction. He limits himself
of study in the drawing classes at the Slade usually to two blocks, the key-block for the
School, he went to the Central School of Arts design and another for the colour, and, manipu-
and Crafts and began etching. One or two lating his tone-gradations with his rollers, he
well-designed book-plates—one of which was takes the impressions with an Albion printing
reproduced in the December number of The press. Discarding the water-colour and rice-
Studio—and a pleasant plate of cattle and paste of the Japanese, he mixes his colour-
landscape, drawn and etched with a happy powders with varnish ; and boxwood is generally
pictorial sense of Nature, lead one to think that his material, though he sometimes uses chestnut,
he may have in time the making of a good Evening at Gaza, with its romantic beauty of
etcher ; but at the suggestion, and under the blue night in a grove of palm-trees, is a reminis-
direction, of Mr. Rooke he addressed himself cence of " somewhere " in the neighbourhood of
to wood-engraving, and this has become his Alexandria, where he spent a month on service,
habitual medium of expression. His work is It is a print of charming appeal, with elegance
artistically interesting, his
simple and straightfor-
ward craftsmanship being
admirably at the service
of his design, which he
invariably conceives with
a sense of decoration.
A remarkable instinct for
spacing with an unfail-
ingly effective balance of
black-and-white masses,
and a command of form
in silhouette, character-
izes all the woodcuts
Captain Gibbings has so
far wrought, whether his
pictorial motive be sim-
ply a cow grazing in a
meadow, the city walls
of Salonica seen austerely „a c0rner in malta." from a wood-block print in three colours
under sharp contrast of by robert gibbings
PENNEFATHEfc
light and shade, or a cluster of house-roofs in a
snow-storm ; or has he a circle to fill with
figure, landscape, or marine, for book-plate or
tail-piece. Dublin under Snow, an impression
from the mess-room window of the Royal
Barracks, is an engaging print, remarkable for
the ingenuity with which the white roof-shapes
are disposed so as to carry the eye away into
. an illusion of distance and variety of plane, in
a true wintry atmosphere cleverly suggested by
these flat contrasting tones of black and white.
It is, however, in his use of colour-printing
in connexion with wood-blocks that Captain
Gibbings may specially interest us at the
moment, for he is aiming at just that decorative
book-plate, from a wood-block print charm of effect by simple means with which,
by robert gibbings as T }10pe> the artistic colour-print may win its
way into the homes of the people in the coming
one recognizes in his prints. After two years time of social reconstruction. He limits himself
of study in the drawing classes at the Slade usually to two blocks, the key-block for the
School, he went to the Central School of Arts design and another for the colour, and, manipu-
and Crafts and began etching. One or two lating his tone-gradations with his rollers, he
well-designed book-plates—one of which was takes the impressions with an Albion printing
reproduced in the December number of The press. Discarding the water-colour and rice-
Studio—and a pleasant plate of cattle and paste of the Japanese, he mixes his colour-
landscape, drawn and etched with a happy powders with varnish ; and boxwood is generally
pictorial sense of Nature, lead one to think that his material, though he sometimes uses chestnut,
he may have in time the making of a good Evening at Gaza, with its romantic beauty of
etcher ; but at the suggestion, and under the blue night in a grove of palm-trees, is a reminis-
direction, of Mr. Rooke he addressed himself cence of " somewhere " in the neighbourhood of
to wood-engraving, and this has become his Alexandria, where he spent a month on service,
habitual medium of expression. His work is It is a print of charming appeal, with elegance
artistically interesting, his
simple and straightfor-
ward craftsmanship being
admirably at the service
of his design, which he
invariably conceives with
a sense of decoration.
A remarkable instinct for
spacing with an unfail-
ingly effective balance of
black-and-white masses,
and a command of form
in silhouette, character-
izes all the woodcuts
Captain Gibbings has so
far wrought, whether his
pictorial motive be sim-
ply a cow grazing in a
meadow, the city walls
of Salonica seen austerely „a c0rner in malta." from a wood-block print in three colours
under sharp contrast of by robert gibbings