New acquisitions in prints 2022

J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) with William Say (1768-1834)
Apullia in search of Apullus (c. 1814; printed 1873)
Etching and mezzotint, 21 x 30 cm [an unpublished plate for the Liber Studiorum]

The art collection at College Street, apart from the portraits of Headmasters and Masters of the Lower School, and a few exceptional individuals like the much loved Vlad Khusid, has mostly grown over the last couple of decades through the Art Fellow programme, which has been in abeyance for several years as a consequence of the COVID pandemic. Throughout this period, however, we have continued to make modest acquisitions in prints, the only part of the art market in which museum-quality work remains affordable.

In 2022, we were able to purchase five new prints, to which our dealer Mr Josef Lebovic added two more as a gift, continuing his generous support for the Sydney Grammar collection. The oldest work in date is an etching and mezzotint by J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) from around 1814, although our impression dates from 1873. Apullia in search of Apullus is a rare, if not unique subject extrapolated from Ovid, Metamorphoses XIV, 516-26: an unnamed Apulian shepherd, ‘Apullus’ insults a band of nymphs who turn him into an oleaster or wild olive; here a girlfriend, not mentioned in Ovid and simply named ‘Apullia’ is looking for her lost companion.

Turner’s painting of the same subject (1814), and the model for the print, is today in the Tate collection in London. The artist was deeply inspired by the seventeenth-century French landscape master Claude Lorrain, and the composition of this subject is closely based on Claude’s Jacob, Laban and his daughters (1676), a painting well known to Turner and which he would have had many opportunities to study in the collection of his friend and patron Lord Egremont at Petworth House, where he was often a guest.

Charles-François Daubigny (1817-78)
The Brook in the clearing, 1862/later printing
Cliché-verre, 21.6 x 19.2 cm

The second-oldest print, from 1862, is The Brook in the clearing by Charles-François Daubigny (1817-78), best known as a plein-air painter and an important precursor to the Impressionists. This is also an example of a relatively rare and unusual process not previously represented in the collection, known as a cliché-verre. Instead of engraving or etching an image into copper and then printing it in an etching press, the design is scratched onto a glass plate covered in opaque varnish; the plate is then laid on a sheet of treated paper and exposed to natural sunlight (like all early photographs). Wherever the varnish has been scratched away, the light will print a line onto the treated paper. This technique, whose origins go back almost to the beginning of photography, was most popular in the mid-19th century, although it was later revived by a few experimental modernists.

Lloyd Rees (1895-1988)
Caloola Tree, 1980
Lithograph (ed. 74/80), 51.6 x 66.4 cm

The remaining new acquisitions build on our existing holdings of Australian prints. The largest and most spectacular of these is Caloola tree (1980) a wonderfully confident and spontaneous work by the already elderly Lloyd Rees (1895-1988), which is also our first sample of the technique of lithography. This is neither a relief nor an intaglio process, but involves drawing directly onto a stone block with a wax pencil and then treating the remaining surface of the stone to make it hydrophilic and oil-repellent, allowing the original drawing to be exactly reproduced.

Harold B. Herbert (1891-1945)
An old monastery, 1924
Etching (ed. 27/50), 20.3 x 15.1 cm

Also new to the College Street collection is Harold B. Herbert (1891-1945), a talented artist known especially for his mastery of watercolour as well as his skill as a printmaker; he was an influential art critic too and a member of the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board, whose work eventually led to the foundation of the National Gallery in Canberra. An old monastery (1924) is a fresh and spontaneous etching with a bold use of empty space in the foreground, based on a drawing now in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, A Deserted monastery, Martigues, France, (1922).

Sydney Ure Smith (1887-1949)
The Cottage, Clarendon (Windsor District), 1921
Etching (ed. 43/50), 10.5 x 10.6 cm

Three of the new prints are by Sydney Ure Smith (1887-1949), by whom we already have one beautiful etching currently hanging on Level 6 opposite the lift. Ure Smith, an Old Sydneian, was not only one of the finest printmakers in Australia a century ago, but a notable figure in the artworld of his time. He published Art in Australia (1916-42; his son Sam Ure Smith later started a new series under the title Art and Australia from 1963) as well as the leading women’s magazine, The Home (1920-42), which covered aspects of modernist art, and numerous art books; he also ran an important advertising firm which employed many artists (including the young Lloyd Rees) and was a trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW.

Sydney Ure Smith (1887-1949)
The Windsor Farm, c. 1919
Etching (ed. 23/30), 11.1 x 15.1 cm

All three new etchings by Ure Smith are of the Windsor district, including The Windsor Farm (c.1919), The Cottage, Clarendon (1921) – both of which are expressions of his interest in the early history of Sydney and its region and the conservation of its historic buildings – and The Hawkesbury, Windsor (1921), not far from the site of Arthur Streeton’s famous painting ‘The purple noon’s transparent might’ (1896, National Gallery of Victoria).

Sydney Ure Smith (1887-1949)
The Hawkesbury, Windsor, 1921
Etching (artist’s proof), 20.3 x 22.1 cm

This work is signed as an ‘artist’s proof’ which usually means that it was an impression by the artist himself before the printing of the limited edition, often carried out by a specialist craftsman. Two of the Ure Smith prints, The Windsor Farm and The Cottage, Clarendon, are the pieces gifted by Mr Lebovic in recognition of the special connection of the artist with our School.