White 28. Edition 60. Signed, titled, numbered 8/60 in pencil, in the image, lower left.
Image size 9 7/16 x 8 9/16 inches (240 x 217 mm); sheet size 10 1/4 x 10 1/8 inches (260 x 257 mm).
A brilliant, early impression, on Japanese mulberry, with margins (1/4 to 1 1/8 inches), in very good condition. The top sheet edge deckled, the other three sides trimmed to, or beyond the outside marginal areas of color. From 4 blocks, printed in : 1) chrome yellow, 2) spectrum red, 3) permanent blue, 4) Chinese blue.
Exhibited: London, 1936 (Redfern), no. 64. Illustrated in 'Linocuts of the Machine Age' by Stephen Coppel, National Gallery of Australia, 1995.
Collections: British Museum, Glenbow Museum (Calgary, Alberta), Metropolitan Museum of Art.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sybil Andrews (1898-1992) was born in Bury St Edmunds, West Suffolk, England. Unable to afford art school tuition after high school and given the shortage of young men at home during the First World War, in 1916, she was apprenticed as a welder, working in the Bristol Welding Company's airplane factory, where she helped in the development of the first all-metal airplane. During this period, she took an art correspondence course and, after the war, returned to Bury St Edmunds, where she was employed as an art teacher at Portland House School. She then attended the Heatherley School of Fine Art in London from 1922 to 1924.
In 1918, Andrews met the architect/artist Cyril Power, who became her mentor and working partner. Andrews and Power moved to London in 1922, and three years later, the pair became staff members of the Grosvenor School of Modern Art. Power was appointed as one of the founding lecturers, while Andrews became the school's first secretary. Both Power and Andrews were swept up in Britain's linocut craze of the 1920s and 1930s under the tutelage of Claude Flight, instructor and champion of linocutting at the Grosvenor School. Flight, a proponent of the relatively new medium, believed that linocuts were most appropriate for expressing the modern age in which they lived—the medium facilitated ease of execution, free from the confines of the traditional labor-intensive woodcuts based on Japanese methods. Flight's most important technical innovation in linocut printmaking was eliminating the key block (linear outline), resulting in bold compositions composed purely of areas of color. Adopting Flight's process, Andrews used ordinary household linoleum, gouges made from umbrella ribs, and a simple wooden spoon to burnish the paper during printing. She employed three to five blocks (one per color) and standard printing inks applied with a roller to create her dynamic compositions.
Andrews' contemporaries, fellow students of Claude Flight, include Swiss artist Lill Tschudi and Australian artists Dorrit Black, Ethel Spowers, and Eveline Syme. The Grosvenor School style integrated elements of cubism, futurism, and vorticism to portray the dynamism, vibrancy, and movement inherent to the modernizing society of their time, which came to be known as the 'Machine Age.'
Between 1930 and 1938, Andrews and Power shared a studio in Hammersmith, where they pursued their co-creative collaboration, sharing inspiration and exploring printmaking techniques with a focus on the linocut medium. The two produced a series of sports posters, including posters promoting tennis at Wimbledon and the Epsom Derby for London Transport, under the joint signature of "Andrew Power."
Andrews regularly displayed her work at the 'Exhibitions of British Linocuts,' an annual exhibition organized by Claude Flight at the Redfern Gallery in London from 1929 to 1937. Flight arranged for these exhibitions to tour Britain and travel to countries as far away as the United States, China, and Australia.
With the beginning of the Second World War, Andrews returned to work as a welder, this time for the British Power Company, constructing warships. There she met Walter Morgan, whom she married in 1943. Seven wartime depictions of ships by Andrews are in the collection of the Royal Air Force Museum London.
In 1947, Andrews and Morgan moved to Canada and settled in Campbell River, British Columbia. Seeking a new life together after the trials of two world wars, they moved to a small cottage in the logging community on Vancouver Island, where they made ends meet building and repairing boats.
By the mid-1940s, the works of the Grosvenor School artists had gone out of fashion, and for almost four decades, the linocuts of Andrews and her contemporaries remained virtually forgotten. It was not until the 1970s that interest in the movement's groundbreaking innovations reemerged to become among the most acclaimed and sought-after 20th-century modernist printmaking, with Andrews' work now considered particularly desirable. Rediscovered by the art world, Andrews spent the rest of her life working, painting, and teaching.
Interest in Andrews' work was further enhanced in late 2019 when the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London hosted an exhibition of the Grosvenor School's works from June to September. Approximately a month after it closed, a one-person exhibition of her works opened at the Glenbow Museum in Canada. The Glenbow Museum in Canada holds a collection of over 1000 examples of Andrews' work, including the main body of her color linocuts, original linoleum blocks, oil paintings and watercolors, drawings, drypoint etchings, sketchbooks, and personal papers.
Sybil Andrews was elected to the Society of Canadian Painters, Etchers, and Engravers in 1951 when her linocut 'Indian Dance' was selected as the annual presentation print. In 1975, while working as a teacher and focusing on her practice, she completed one of her major works, 'The Banner of St Edmund,' a hand embroidery in silks on linen that was first conceived, designed, and begun in 1930. This banner now hangs in St Edmundsbury Cathedral, Bury St Edmunds, the town of her birth.
In 2015, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Canada, held an exhibition titled 'A Study in Contrast: Sybil Andrews and Gwenda Morgan,' which compared and contrasted the fellow Grosvenor School artists. In 2017, her work was included in the exhibition 'The Ornament of a House: Fifty Years of Collecting at the Burnaby Art Gallery.' A complete chronology of Andrews' extensive exhibition history is available in the 2015 publication 'Sybil Andrews Linocuts, Complete Catalogue.'
Andrews' celebrated work is represented in major museums in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain, including the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (British Columbia), Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Institute of Chicago, The British Museum (London), The Clark Art Institute, Art Institute of Chicago, Auckland Art Gallery (New Zealand), Baltimore Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, Glenbow Museum (Calgary), Harvard Art Museums, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Museum of Modern Art, The National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), Princeton University Art Museum, Rhode Island School of Design, Smithsonian Institution, and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London).
