Month: November 2023

Ethel Spowers

The Tate website defines linocut thus:

“…The lino block consists of a thin layer of linoleum (a canvas backing coated with a preparation of solidified linseed oil) usually mounted on wood. The soft linoleum can be cut away more easily than a wood-block and in any direction (as it has no grain) to produce a raised surface that can be inked and printed. Its slightly textured surface accepts ink evenly.  Linoleum was invented in the nineteenth century as a floor covering. It became popular with artists and amateurs for printmaking in the twentieth century…”

It is thought to have been first displayed in the first decade of the twentieth century and its popularity has grown ever since.  The artist I am showcasing today is a twentieth century Australian artist who made her name as a skilled exponent of this artistic technique.  Let me introduce you to Ethel Louise Spowers, a painter and printmaker.

Ethel Louise Spowers was born on July 11th 1890 at South Yarra, Melbourne.  She was the second born of six children of New Zealand-born newspaper proprietor, William George Lucas Spowers and his London-born wife Annie Christina, née Westgarth.  She had four sisters, Frances, Cecilia, Rosalind and Myra and a younger brother, Allan.  Ethel was brought up in a wealthy and cultured household in a mansion in St Georges Road in the Melbourne suburb of Toorak.

The Kite by Ethel Spowers (1918) Watercolour

Ethel was enrolled at the private Melbourne Church of England Girls Grammar which she matriculated from in 1908.  Having completed her schooling, she went with the family on a trip to Europe and Ethel attended an art school in Paris.  This introduction to world of art, together with the encouragement from her mother and grandfather, both of who were amateur artists, and who inspired her. In 1911, she enrolled on a six year course in drawing and painting at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in Melbourne, where she became known for her black and white children’s story illustrations.  As a student she was allowed to exhibit annually at the National Gallery of Victoria, and also having become a member of the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria she began to regularly exhibit in their exhibitions. In 1918, selected members of the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria were invited to exhibit with the Arts and Crafts Society of New South Wales and it was here that Ethel sold her first work.  It was a pen and ink and watercolour painting entitled The Kite.  The National Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney purchased it.

School is Out by Ethel Spowers (1936)

In 1920 Spowers held her first solo exhibition at the Decorations Gallery in Melbourne.  The exhibition comprised of fifty-four of her works which included black and white drawings, watercolours and two oils, many of which depicted fairy-tale and nursery rhyme themes. In 1921, Ethel Spowers provided the illustrations for Furnley Maurice’s novel Arrows of Longing

The Pigeon Loft by Ethel Spowers (1925)

That same year, the Spowers once again travelled to Europe, this time for an extended stay.  During this European voyage of discovery Ethel continued with her artistic studies.  Whilst in London she attended the Regent Street Polytechnic, and she and fellow Australian, Mary Reynolds, exhibited their work at the Macrae Gallery.  Buoyed with the success of the exhibition Ethel decided to prolong her stay in Europe whilst her parents and siblings went back to Australia.

The Blind by Ethel Spowers (1926)

During her European stay, she also went to Paris, where she enrolled at Academié Ranson.  Later, in 1923, whilst in Paris, her friend, Eveline Syme, from back home came to see her. Spowers and Syme were childhood friends who came from rival media families who ran competing newspapers, The Argus and The Age.   Eveline Syme and Ethel Spowers both attended life drawing classes at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.  In 1924, after three years of living in Europe, Ethel returned home to Melbourne and had her work exhibited at the Victorian Artists’ Society as well as having a solo exhibition at the New Gallery in Melbourne in 1925 and 1927. It was around this time that Ethel Spowers became interested in Japanese woodblock printing, The prints are made by carving an image on a wooden block, applying ink or paint, and pressing it on paper or fabric.  She began to experiment with this art form.

The Plough by Ethel Spowers (1928) Lino-cut

Claude Flight was one of the leading artists to experiment with and make popular the linoleum cutting and printing technique. He initially studied art at the Heatherley School of Fine Art from 1913-1914 and exhibited at the Royal Academy, Paris , the Royal Society of British Artists. and the Redfern.  He taught at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art from 1926.

Ethel Spowers first became aware of Claude Flight’s ideas through her good friend, Eveline Syme, who in 1928 had bought a copy of Flight’s groundbreaking book Lino‑cuts. A hand‑book of linoleum‑cut colour printing, which was published in 1927. Spowers and Syme were captivated with this new form of art.   Ethel Spowers was familiar with woodcut printing but she wanted to learn more, and so, a few months later, she and her friend had enrolled on a course run by Claude Flight at the Grosvenor School of Art, London.

The Enchanted Brds by Ethel Spowers (1927) Watercolour

Claude Flight educated them in the art of colour printing without a linear key block and were inspired by his encouragement to encapsulate the speed and movement of contemporary urban life simply, by simplified form, bold colour and rhythmic patterns. Eveline and Ethel learnt quickly and absorbed all Flight had to tell them and quickly developed their own distinctive new styles and subject matter. 

Speed, a lino-cut by Claude Flight

Whereas, at the time, Flight was interested in depicting the modern age through transport and industry, Ethel Spowers preferred to depict scenes of children and family life including picnics, urban street scenes and children at play.  Her bold and simplistic works oozed vibrancy.

Melbourne from the River by Ethel Spowers (c.1924)

Once back in Australia, Ethel Spowers set about promoting the lino-cut medium as she fervently believed that it was a modern medium for a modern age, and she and Syme, along with Dorrit Black staged a group exhibition of their lino-cut works at the Everyman’s Lending Library in Melbourne in 1930.  Ethel also demonstrated the technique at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition, held in Melbourne, in October 1935.

The Rain Cloud by Ethel Spowers (1931)

The London art scene took notice of Spowers’ work and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the British Museum, bought works of hers in 1930.  The following year Ethel Spowers returned to London and once again enrolled at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art to study with Claude Flight. While in Australia, Spowers continued to promote this modernist art style through the media and lectures.  She became a founding member of Contemporary Group in Melbourne and acted as an agent for Claude Flight and his circle in Australia. Ethel Spowers was a leading light of this group and was continually having to defend this modernist art style against its more traditionalist disparagers.  In an article in the Australasian in April 1930 she pleaded with all lovers of art to be tolerant to new ideas and not to condemn without understanding. She also gained a teaching post at the Swinburne Technical College, Melbourne in the mid-1930s.

Resting Models by Ethel Spowers (c.1934)

In the late 1930s Ethel Spowers stopped practicing art after being diagnosed with breast cancer.  Her health steadily deteriorated and she died on May 5th 1947 after a long illness.  She was aged 56 and was buried at Fawkner Memorial Park in northwestern Melbourne.

Ethel Sands and Anna (Nan) Hope Hudson

The blog today is about two talented early twentieth century painters who became lifelong friends and companions despite them having different ideas as to what was a “perfect” life.  Ethel Sands preferred the life of a socialite and enjoyed lavish soirees and was reputed to be one of the most important hostesses in cultured English society in the early twentieth century. However, Nan (Anna Hope) Hudson was more introverted, and craved a quiet rural lifestyle in her beloved France and Sands and Hudson apportioned their time between England and France to accommodate their lifestyle preferences . The art historian Wendy Baron described them as:

“…two independent, individual women with many tastes and interests in common, whose mutual love and understanding rescued them from the loneliness of spinsterhood…”

Ethel Sands (c.1927)

Ethel Sands was born on July 6th 1873 in Newport, Rhode Island.  She was the first-born child of Mary Morton Hartpence and Mahlon Day Sands who married in 1872. It was Mahlon’s second wife.  His first wife Edith Mintum died of typhus in 1868 whilst on a sea voyage.  Mahlon Sands was secretary of the American Free Trade League, as well as being a partner of his deceased father’s pharmaceutical importing firm, A.B. Sands and Company.   Mary and Mahlon also had two young sons, Mahlon Alanson Sands and Morton Harcourt Sands, who were five and eleven years younger respectively than their sister Ethel.  The three children were brought up in a well-to-do upper-class family household.

Still Life with a View over a Cemetery by Ethel Sands (1923)

When Ethel was eleven-years-old the family left America for what was supposed to be a short trip to England but, once there, decided to base themselves in London which they thought was a good base for onward travelling to the European countries.  However, they kept their house in Rhode Island and would return there once every year

Tea with Sickert by Ethel Sands (1912)

Mary and Mahlon moved amongst the wealthy London society, such as the Rothschild family and politicians, such as Gladstone, the writer Henry James and the artist John Singer Sargent.  They were also part of Edward VII, the Prince of Wales’ “Malborough House” social circle. 

Mrs Mahlon Day Sands by John Singer Sargent (1894)

Ethel’s mother Mary was considered to be a famous Society beauty of the day who had her portrait painted by Sargent and Henry James based his heroic character “Madame de Mauves” on her in his novella which centred on the troubled marriage of a scrupulous American wife and a far from scrupulous French husband.  Ethel Sands inherited a taste for socialising from her American parents.

Nan Hudson playing Patience at Chateau d’Auppegarde

Ethel Sands’ happy family life came to a shuddering halt when she was thirteen for in May 1888, her father, whilst out riding through Hyde Park, was thrown from his horse and died, aged 46.  Ethel’s mother was now tasked with bringing up the family on her own.

Nan Hudson c.1908

John Singer Sargent had encouraged Ethel to concentrate on her art and she took his advice for in 1894 when she was twenty-one, she decided to go to spend time in Paris to study painting.  Ethel began her artistic education at the Académie Carrière in Paris. Her early paintings featured highly coloured still-life works and interior depictions. Sands first exhibited her work in an exhibition held at the Salon d’Automne, Paris in 1904.  It was in 1894, whilst an art student that she met her lifelong partner Anna (Nan) Hope Hudson.

The Lamb Inn, Wallingford by Nan Hudson (1912)

Anna Hudson, best known as Nan Hudson, was born on September 10th 1869 in New York City. Her father was Colonel Edward McKenny Hudson, who died in 1892 at the age of sixty-seven; her mother had died in 1878 when Nan was just 9 years old. Having lost both parents, twenty-three year old Nan was left a large inheritance which was the result of her grandfather’s success as a partner of a banknote engraving organization, which later merged to become the American Bank Note Company.  Now, a young woman of independent means, was able to choose her own future. She had developed a love of painting and decided to follow this love and decided that Paris offered the best opportunity to further her artistic knowledge.  In the early days of living in the French capital she met Ethel Sands, a fellow American and art student who became her lifelong friend and companion.

Nan and Ethel studied together in 1896 at the studio of the French painter Eugène Carrière and then from January 1897 Nan also took classes with the Flemish painter Henri Evenepoel.  The friendship between Ethel and Nan, which started as study friends, soon blossomed and before long, they became inseparable.  This closeness is somewhat astonishing as the two women had totally different personalities.  While Ethel Sands found life in London, with all its social distractions, irresistible, Nan Hudson preferred the quieter existence in Paris and the French countryside.  However, they managed to compromise, dividing their time between France and England to satisfy both their yearnings, alternating periods of painting with travelling, socialising and entertaining.

Miss Hudson at Rowlandson House by Walter Sickert (c.1910)

The writer Virginia Woolf, in her diaries, described Nan Hudson as being dour and upstanding who was always stylishly dressed while the artist Walter Sickert, in a letter to the pair, described Nan as being the radiant and dashing horsewoman of a young man’s dreams.  In 1910 Walter Sickert completed a portrait of Nan Hudson, standing hand on hip and looking directly at the viewer, and captures her independent spirit and flair.  The painting was given the title Miss Hudson at Rowlandson House.

Portrait of Ethel Sands by Walter Sickert (1914)

After Nan and Ethel had made a trip to Venice, Nan completed a painting entitled Giudecca Canal and she had it exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in 1906.  It was liked by the critics and greatly admired by Walter Sickert. At first, he did not realise that the work was by her but once he found out he contacted her offering her advice on painting for the future. This initial letter to her resulted in a long-running correspondence between them and genuine friendship that lasted for many years. In 1907 Sickert invited both Nan Hudson and Ethel Sands to join the Fitzroy Street Group, which he had just formed and meetings were held in his studio in Fitzroy Street, to the north of central London.  The reason for this invitation could be because he admired their work or cynics would say it was more to do with their financial and social status both of which Sickert wanted to “explore”.  Both women accepted the invitation. Their main purpose of the group was to explore contemporary styles and methods, which they believed would challenge the conventional traditions of the New England Art Club. It was to be the establishing of the first artists’ collective.

Ethel Sands by Lady Ottoline Morrell vintage snapshot print, 1909 NPG Ax140123 © National Portrait Gallery, London

In 1911 many of the Fitzroy Group Group’s members, including Walter Sickert, formed the nucleus of the new Camden Town Group, and by November 1913 the Fitzroy Street Group had ceased to exist.  Unfortunately for Ethel and Nan the Camden Town Group was only open to male artists and so neither Nan or Ethel were not invited to join this new group. However, in 1913, a new grouping was formed known as the London Group.  The London Group was formed by a merger of the Camden Town Group and the English Cubists, later known as the Vorticists. It was the coming together of radical young artists who were defying the stranglehold which the Royal Academy had on exhibiting new works of art. The group was open to both male and female artists and Ethel Sands and Nan Hudson became founder members.

The Visitor by Nan Hudson

Up till this time Nan Hudson had only exhibited her work in Paris at the Salon d’Automne but through Ethel Sand’s contacts within the London art scene she began to show her work in London and exhibited her work at the New English Art Club, the Allied Artists’ Association and the Leicester Galleries.

Château d’Auppegard by Nan Hudson

At the start of the First World War, Hudson and Sands went to France and helped set up a hospital for wounded soldiers near Dieppe. This was forced to close but Nan Hudson continued to nurse both in England and in France until autumn 1918.  During the spell in Normandy during the war Nan Hudson fell in love with the area and after the war in 1920, she bought the Château d’Auppegard.  It was a seventeenth-century house with a grey slate gabled roof which lay about ten miles inland from Dieppe in the Normandy countryside.  This became their dream home and she and Ethel Sands spent the summers together and devoted much time and energy in its restoration and decoration. The two women renovated the dilapidated dwelling, even commissioning murals from the Bloomsbury artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant for the loggia.

A Dressing Room by Ethel Sands

Nan Hudson completed a painting depicting her beloved chateau which is now part of the Tate collection.  She used a restricted palette of cool tones.  The depiction is typical of her later works when she tended towards landscapes with an element of architectural interest.   From 1926 onwards Nan concentrated on depicting rural landscapes found around the outskirts of Dieppe and the commune of Auppegard.  Many other landscape works came from the extensive touring around France in the Spring and early Autumn done by her and Ethel Sands.

Honfleur Harbour by Nan Hudson

Very few of Ethel Sands and Nan Hudson’s paintings survived the Second World War. Ethel Sands’ house in London was destroyed following a direct hit on it during the Blitz which obliterated much of both of their work. As well as this, Château d’Auppegard itself sustained extensive damage from bombing and looting that followed, when many drawings and paintings, including a collection of works by Sickert and Augustus John, were stolen, never to be seen again. It is very likely that paintings by the Ethel and Nan were therefore lost too.  Ethel and Nan returned to Auppegard in May 1946 and were horrified to witness the devastation of their beloved home.   One visitor to the chateau was Vanessa Bell who visited them in that September and she wrote about what she witnessed first-hnd:

“…The house has been terribly damaged by a flying bomb which exploded near. They have managed to repair the worst things and when one drives up to it [it] is still very lovely. But inside only the dining room is usable, and they have hardly any furniture and just enough for themselves. Poor old things – as they say, they are too old to begin all over again and they certainly do look very aged and decrepit…”

Still Life with Picture of the Madonna by Ethel Sands

However. the two occupants of the chateau, both then in their seventies, would not be defeated by the devastation and set about trying to repair it.  Age finally defeated them as far as renovating the chateau and Nan began to worry about its fate once she and Ethel had died.  In the end they decided to give the house over to a young friend of theirs, an amateur painter, Louis le Breton, on the understanding that it would eventually be bequeathed to the French nation. He, like the two owners of the chateau, shared their passionate love of the house and they felt sure that after they had died, his love of the Auppegard property would be preserved and cherished. Hudson and Sands continued to live at the château within a specially adapted self-contained apartment but their careful planning for the future of the building came to naught when Louis le Breton pre-deceased both of them, dying suddenly in the garden at Auppegard in March 1957.

Still Life with Books and Flowers by Ethel Sands

Nan Hudson became too ill to live there and was cared for initially by her life-long companion, Ethel and latterly at a nursing home in Kilburn, London, dying just a few months later in September 1957 aged eighty-eight.

Auppegard Church from the Chateau by Ethel Sands

Her funeral was held at Auppegard and she was buried in the churchyard facing her beloved château.

Ethel Sands died on March 19th 1962, aged eighty-eight.

Nettie Blanche Lazzell

Blanche Lazell during her time at the Art Student League, New York

Cornelius Carhart Lazzell, a direct descendent of pioneers who settled in Monongolia County, West Virginnia, after the American Revolutionary War, married Mary Prudence Pope and the couple went on to have ten children, three sons and seven daughters.  The ninth child was Nettie Blanche Lazzell who was born on October 10th 1878 and it is she who is the subject of today’s blog. 

The Lazzell family, who were devout Methodists, lived on a large farmstead near Maidsville, West Virginia, which lies close to the Pennsylvania border.  The town was thought to have been named Maidsville on account of there being a large proportion of “old maids” among the first settlers !  Her education during her early days was at the one-room schoolhouse on the property where students from the first through to eighth grades were taught from October through February.

Amarylis by Blanche Lazzell (1930)

In 1891, when Blanche was just twelve years old, her mother died, aged 48. In her early teens Blanche experienced hearing problems and became partially deaf and it was not until a year later that a Baltimore doctor was able to remedy her illness.  In 1893, at the age of fifteen, Blanche enrolled at the West Virginia Conference Seminary, which is now the West Virginia Wesleyan College.  From there, in 1899, she transferred to the South Carolina Co-Educational Institute in Edgefield. Once she graduated from the Institute, she became a teacher at the Red Oaks School in Ramsey, South Carolina. In spring of 1900, she returned to her Maidsville home, where she tutored her younger sister, Bessie.   In 1901, she studied art at West Virginia University and did well, receiving a degree in art history and the fine arts in 1905.  She continued to study at WVU on a part time basis until 1909, allowing her to broaden her knowledge of art and twice substituting as a painting teacher.

West Virginnia Coal Works by Blanche Lazzell (1949)

In 1908, at the age of thirty, she moved to New York and enrolled at the Art Students League.  The League had been formed in 1875 to provide more variety and flexibility in education for artists than it was felt the National Academy of Design provided. This breakaway group of art students included many women, many of whom, in the late 1890s and early 1900s, took on key roles. In Marian Wardle’s book: American Women Modernists: The Legacy of Robert Henri, 1910-1945. She recounts the words of the American artist Edith Dimmock regarding the atmosphere at the Art League:

“…In a room innocent of ventilation, the job was to draw Venus (just the head) and her colleagues. We were not allowed to hitch bodies to the heads——yet. The dead white plaster of Paris was a perfect inducer of eye-strain and was called “The Antique.” One was supposed to work from “The Antique” for two years. The advantage of “The Antique” was that all these gods and athletes were such excellent models: there never was the twitch of an iron-bound muscle. Venus never batted her hard-boiled egg eye, and the Discus-thrower never wearied. They were also cheap models and did not have to be paid union rates…”

During her time at the Art League Blanche studied under Kenyon Cox and William Merritt Chase and one of her fellow students was Georgia O’Keeffe. 

SS. Ivernia

On July 3rd 1912, Lazzell set sail on an American Travel Club cruise on the Cunard liner SS Ivernia, crossing the Atlantic and arriving in England. From there Blanche visited the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy.  She was fascinated by the architecture of the various churches she visited.   

Sailboat by Blanche Lazzell

In August she left the tour party and travelled to Paris.  She then stayed in a pension in Montparnasse on the Left Bank.  She moved into the Students’ Hostel on Boulevard Saint-Michel, one of the two major streets in the Latin Quarter of Paris, running alongside the Luxembourg Gardens.  During her stay in the French capital, she took lessons at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Académie Julian, and Académie Delécluse.  She eventually established herself at the Académie Moderne where her tutors were the post-impressionist painters Charles Guérin and David Rosen.  Of all the art tuition she received in Paris she was the most contented with the ideas and techniques behind the Parisian avant-garde art, a genre which pushed the boundaries of ideas and creativity, which she learnt about at the Académie Moderne.

The Monongahela River at Morgantown by Blanche Lazzell (1939)

Blanche returned to America on the White Star passenger liner, SS Arabic, at the end of September 1913.  On her return to America Blanche went to live with her younger sister Bessie in Morgantown.  During her European travels Blanche built up a portfolio of sketches and paintings enough for her to have a solo exhibition in December 1914.  To make ends meet, she rented a studio in town and taught art as well as selling her hand-painted chinaware.

Byrdcliffe Artist Colony

Byrdcliffe Artist Colony

In the summer of 1917, Blanche spent time at the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, an artists’ colony just outside Woodstock, New York.  The Byrdcliffe Art Colony was founded by Jane Byrd McCall and Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead and colleagues, Bolton Brown, an artist and Hervey White, a writer.  The name of the colony came from an amalgamation of Jane and Ralph’s middle names.  It was founded in 1902 and the complex was formed of a number of Arts and Crafts cottages.  It was there that visual artists, poets, and musicians found their muses and spent time creating works of art, music and poetry. In later times famous people, such as Bob Dylan, writer Thomas Mann, and even famous actors, Helen Hayes, and Chevy Chase, spent time at Byrdcliffe.  Blanche studied under the Belgian-born artist William Schumaker who whilst in Paris had come into contact with European avant-garde artists.  On his return to America he brought with him modernist principles.  The term modernism in art was a rejection of history and conservative values such as realistic depiction of subjects; it was an innovation and experimentation with form, that is to say, the shapes, colours and lines that make up the work have a tendency towards abstraction.  From 1913 to 1931, Schumaker was artist-in-residence at the artists’ colony at Byrdcliffe.

Still Life by Blanche Lazzell

In 1918 Blanche Lazzell left Morganstown and moved permanently to Provincetown, which is situated on the northern tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a place she had previously visited in 1915.   She made the town her summer base while wintering back in Morganstown and Manhatten. 

Blanche Lazzell outside her Fish House studio, Princetown

She purchased an old fish house which overlooked the harbour of Provincetown and converted it into her studio.  She immersed herself into the local art scene and became a member of the Provincetown Art Association and the Sail Loft Club, Provincetown’s women’s art club.  She also became involved with the Provincetown Printers, a group of artists, most of whom were women, who created art using woodblock printing techniques.  It was a refuge for artists and a lively hub of experimentation and innovation. It became known as Princetown Print.  It was a white-line woodcut print, but it differed from woodcut printing as rather than creating separate woodblocks for each colour, one block was made and painted. Small groves between the elements of the design created the white line. In the main the artists often used soft colours, so that the finished product sometimes had the appearance of watercolour paintings.  Recalling her first summer at Provincetown, Blanche Lazzell fondly remembered her time there saying:

“…Hundreds of American artists who had been living in Europe before the first World War flocked to Provincetown. This quaint old seaport town, famous for the first landing place of the Pilgrims, was already an art colony…To be in Provincetown for the first time, in those days, under ordinary conditions was delightful enough, but that summer of 1915, when the whole scene, everything and everybody was new, it was glorious indeed–”

Untitled Abstract work by Blanche Lazzell

Lazzell returned to Paris in 1923 and studied with both Fernand Léger, Andre Lhote and Albert Gleizes, who was said to be one of the founders of cubism. By 1925, Blanche had mastered the static and shuffled planes of Synthetic Cubism, to which she added her own distinctive colour palette and elegant receptivity. Blanche defined Cubism as:

“… the organization of flat planes of colour, with an interplay of space, instead of perspective…”

Princetown Backyards by Blanche Lazzell

This was a style which was excellently suited to her woodcuts and often mirrored the angular patterns of the Provincetown houses, rooftops, and wharves which are depicted in many of her woodcut prints.  It is also interesting to note that Lazzell was a passionate gardener, and images of flowers often featured in her work but even these images, although based on direct observation, were changed into recurrent interactions of abstracted shapes.

The Flaming Bush by Blanche Lazzell (1933) At auction it realized $87,500.

Blanche’s younger sister Bessie gave birth to a son, in August 1924 and Blanche decided to return to Morganstown to help her.  Lazzell also became a mentor and role model for her niece, Frances Reed, the daughter of her sister Myrtle.   Blanche eventually returned to Princeton in 1926 and one of her first tasks was to pull down her previous studio, the Fish House, as it was getting too cold in the winter months due to the numerous drafts.

The Violet Jug by Blanche Lazzell

Trees by Blanche Lazzell (c.1930)

In 1928 she was invited to be on the board of directors of the international art group, Société Anonyme. Lazzell later joined the New York Society of Women Artists and the Society of Independent Artists. In the 1930s, Blanche took part in an exhibition called Fifty Prints of the Year where she exhibited her compositions The Violet Jug and Trees.

Ecuyère (Horsewoman) by Albert Gleizes (c.1923)

Around the same time she produced a number of pure abstract compositions which shows the influence of Albert Gleizes.

In 1934, America was in the midst of the Great Depression and Blanche Lazzell was one of two West Virginian artists who received Federal Art Project grants through the Works Progress Administration.  This was due to the American government which hired hundreds of artists who collectively created more than 100,000 paintings and murals and over 18,000 sculptures to be found in municipal buildings, schools, and hospitals in all of the 48 states. President Franklin Roosevelt sought to put as many unemployed Americans as possible back to work and to buoy the morale of the citizens. Some of the 20th century’s greatest visual artists were employed by the FAP, along with many nascent Abstract Expressionists.

Blanche Lazzell on her porch of her Provincetown studio, 1942

Blanche Lazzell outside Little Church around the Corner, New York

In May 1956, Blanche Lazzell’s health began to fail and she was taken to a hospital with a suspected stroke.  Lazzell died on June 1st 1956 and she is buried next to her father in Bethel Cemetery in Maidsville.  She was aged 77.

Rowland Hilder

Rowland Frederick Hilder

The artist I am looking at today is the American-born English watercolourist Rowland Frederick Hilder, a great painter of English landscapes and seascapes.  Rowland was born to Roland and Kitty Hilder (née Fissenden) on June 28th, 1905 at Great Neck, a village on a peninsula on the North Shore of Long Island. 

Tyringham Hall by Rowland Hilder

In early 1915, following the outbreak of the First World War, Rowland’s father decided to return to England, and his native county of Kent, where his forbears had lived and he would enlist in the army and serve his country.  The Hilders set sail on the SS Lusitania, a liner which would be destroyed by a German submarine on its next transatlantic crossing in May of that year.

The First Snow by Rowland Hilder

Life at school was not a happy one for Rowland.  He was a tall gangling boy who had a pronounced American accent which went against him, both with his fellow students and some of the teachers.  Hilder was academically challenged and found it difficult to spell correctly.  Fortunately for him, the art master at the school encouraged him to sketch and advised his parents to let their son follow his love of art.

Watermill, Cambridgeshire by Rowland Hilder

Birdham Pool, Chichester by Rowland Hilder

Having shown a great talent for sketching, in 1921, at the age of sixteen, Rowland Hilder enrolled at Goldsmiths’ College in London, an art establishment which had established a reputation for nurturing fine draughtsmanship in its students.  He was initially placed in the etching class but couldn’t stand the smell of the acid so switched to illustration.  While studying illustration at Goldsmiths one of his tutors was the illustrator, Edmund (E.J.) Sullivan who had contributed illustrations for many of the great journals and magazines of the 1890s and Hilder looked up to him and regarded him as a true professional.  Sullivan taught Hilder the discipline of line drawing and with it the essential structure that holds any work of art together.  Hilder remembered his days at Goldsmiths and how Sullivan had encouraged his students to spend a great deal of time sketching.  Rowland was also introduced to the art of one of the greatest draughtsmen of the past, Albrecht Durer.

In Days of Sail by Rowland Hilder

Poole Harbour by Rowland Hilder

As time went by at Goldsmiths Rowland began to think about his future art career and what genre of painting he would like to follow.  At first he decided to become a marine painter and he spent much time on the waterfront sketching and painting boats.  Around this time he also won a prize in a competition sponsored by Cadburys for his work.  The prize, a travelling scholarship,  and Rowland used the money to travel to the Netherlands to study the works of the great Dutch Masters who depicted magnificent marine scenes.

Artist at Work (Edith Hilder by Rowland Hilder

Whilst studying at Goldsmiths, Rowland met fellow student Edith Blenkiron.  She was a botanical painter, and her depictions were often to be found on fabrics or pottery, illustrations for books, or simply painting pictures which could be hung on people’s walls. She said that she was most happy when working direct from nature.  Love blossomed and the couple married and went on to have two children.

Floral Arrangement by Edith and Rowland Hilder

Edith’s beautifully drawn and botanically accurate floral watercolours, with landscape backgrounds often painted by her husband proved very popular.  It was her floral depictions which brought her a following in her own right rather than be just considered as the wife of the artist Rowland Hilder.

During his period at Goldsmiths he completed a large drawing of a cable ship which was bought by two Royal Academicians, William Orpen and Arnesby Brown on behalf of the National Gallery of Australia .  Whilst at Goldsmith he was also approached by two book publishers. Jonathan Cape and Blackies, to illustrate their books of sea stories.  Both publishers were pleased with Hilder’s illustrations and in 1928, publishing house, Jonathan Cape, asked Rowland if he would contemplate switching from is favoured marine and seascapes and concentrate on depicting countryside landscape scenes as they would like him to illustrate books for Mary Webb, an author who had achieved considerable fame for her novel Precious Bane.

The publishers arranged that winter for Rowland Hilder, his mother and his soon to be wife Edith, to stay in Mary Webb’s cottage in the Shropshire countryside so he could familiarise himself with the rural surroundings in which her novel, Precious Bane, was set. Both his wife and mother would remain in the warmth of the indoors during the day, whilst Rowland would trudge through the snow and the frozen winter ground avidly collecting material, both for use in his illustrative work, but also for his newly found love of depicting the landscape in wintry conditions in his paintings.  Hilder was mesmerised by the rural beauty.  Views of the winter landscape astounded Hilder and he realised that the depiction of such beauty could prove popular with the public.  Many of his pictures were seen on greetings and Christmas cards.

World War II poster by Rowland Hilder

When the Second World War broke out in 1939 Rowland Hilder was one of the first artists who was approached by the government to design war posters which would rally round the people of Britain.  One such poster designed by him was Convoy your Country to Victory Save and Lend through our National Savings Group, which was issued and sponsored by the National Savings Committee, London; Scottish Savings Committee, Edinburgh; Ulster Savings Committee, Belfast and printed for H.M. Stationery Office.  The poster depicted merchant navy ships being escorted across the treacherous Atlantic Ocean under the watchful eye of a Royal Navy vessel which is seen flying the White Ensign.

Garden of England by Rowland Hilder

Another project Hilder was involved in was to provide black and white drawings for an illustrated bible.  This wartime bible contains many beautiful depictions of the English landscape, by Rowland Hilder as well as one or two other artists working in the same style.  The idea of this new book was stated in its preface – to give the people of today a copy of the Bible that is easy to read and that will take them at once to the heart of its message.  Some of the drawings depicted Biblical themes whilst others illustrated daily life in the mid twentieth century.

Treasure Island (1929) by Robert Louis Stevenson with twelve colour plates and some black and whight vignettes by Rowland Hilder

Rowland Hilder’s received numerous book illustration commissions included Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1929 edition of Treasure Island.

Landscape with Oast Houses by Rowland Hilder

Hilder achieved great popular success with his portrayal of the English countryside, notably Kent, with the characteristically delineated trees and oast-houses.

Shell advertising poster illustrated by Rowland and Edith Hilder

Shell Guide to May Lanes arranged and painted by Rowland and Edith Hilder

From the 1920s and into the 1950s, the Shell Oil company produced some beautiful advertising posters which many said, were the most beautiful ever produced.  Rowland and Edith Hilder collaborted on a number of the designs.   

In 1956, a book was published featuring the drawings and paintings of Edith and Rowland Hilder. Rowland also had his own books published: Starting with Watercolour and Painting Landscapes in Watercolour and the two volumes of his paintings under the titles Rowland Hilder’s England and Rowland Hilder Country..

After the Second World War, Rowland formed a small family business with his wife and father called The Heron Press which printed, amongst other things, greeting cards.  They became known as “Hilderscapes” a term that Hilder himself disliked.  In 1963 Rowland wanted to move away from his illustrative work and return to his first love, watercolour landscape painting and so he severed connections with the company. 

Shoreham in Kent by Rowland Hilder

Shoreham in Kent by Rowland Hilder

When it comes to locations for his paintings Rowland Hilder considered Shoreham, a village and civil parish in the Sevenoaks District of Kent, England, located 5.2 miles north of Sevenoaks. and the Shoreham Valley, as his first love.

Samuel Palmer ‘s “Barn in a Valley, Sepham Farm”

It was also here in the 1820s that Samuel Palmer, a key figure in Romanticism in Britain, produced visionary pastoral paintings of that area. Hilder tells of how he came across Shoreham:

“…Some fellow students and I discovered Palmer together when we were at Goldsmiths’ College, so I went out to find Shoreham for myself, taking a camera with me. I photographed the farms, and oasts and walked the lanes. I discovered one of my photographs was of Sepham Barn, one of Palmer’s subjects. It had not changed in a hundred years. Later when I went back it had been knocked downand a new tin one was there in its place. I can’t bring myself to include that modern version in my paintings of Shoreham…”

The Lane, High Halstow by Rowland Hilder

Twenty miles north-east of Shoreham lies the village of High Halstow and the surrounding area was the subject of Rowland Hilder’s studies for over fifty years. On one occasion Rowland and fellow Goldsmith student, Norman Hepple, during a sketching holiday, rented an old disused pub in the village. From the front windows they had a view of the neighbouring farm, which was situated in a lane which led to a bird sanctuary. Roland recalled the time:

“…We were invited by a keen bird watcher to join him in one of the hides, to watch a nest of baby herons. I disgraced myself by making an accidental noise, whereupon all the babies were simultaneously sick…”

Rowland Hilder’s sketch

The Old Ford and Bridge, Eynsford by Watercolour by Rowland Hilder

Eynsford is a village and civil parish in the Sevenoaks District of Kent and is a few miles north of Shoreham.   This area is undulating and has a large minority of woodland.    This was also a place Hilder visited many times to sketch and very little has changed since his time.  The bridge at Eynsford leads to a popular pub, the ruins of the local castle and many walks along the river Darent to Lullingstone bridge with its reconstituted Roman villa.

London Docklands by Rowland Hilder

Like his contemporaries, Claughton Pellew, John and Paul Nash, Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious, Hilder shared their interests in depicting the countryside. They would explore themes of rural peace and harmony and rejected modernism. However, Pellew and Ravilious often depicted the clash between pastoral tranquillity and the rise of modernism whereas Hilder just concentrated on depictions of rural beauty whether it is bathed in sunshine or covered in snow and the by-gone aspects of farming practice.

First Snow by Rowland Hilder

Surprisingly Hilder was himself never taught watercolour. He honed the skills after his training, and he wrote several books on the subject.  He also taught his skills at Farnham School of Art, and as professor of art at his alma mater, Goldsmith’s. In 1938 he was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Water Colours, and in 1964 he became president of the Institute.  His work was included in the 1984 Hayward Gallery exhibition: The British Landscape 1920-50. Retrospective exhibition at the Woodlands Gallery in 1985 and Hilder was appointed OBE in 1986. He lived in London but retained a base at Shell Ness, a small coastal hamlet on the most easterly point of the Isle of Sheppey in the English county of Kent. Where he would carry out his marine painting.  He continued to paint into his retirement and died in Greenwich on the 21st April 21st, 1993 two months before is eighty-eighth birthday.

  

In putting this blog together I was helped by information I found in the following websites:

THE BOOKROOM ART PRESS

The Watercolour Log