Hot August

Charles Shannon (1863-1937) was a painter, printmaker and collector whose life is inseparable from that of Charles Ricketts (1866-1931). They first met in 1882, when both were still in their teens, on the wood engraving course at the City and Guilds Technical Art School at Lambeth and became friends and life-long companions. In 1898 they moved into James McNeill Whistler’s former house, The Vale, in Chelsea, which provided the name for their private press and the book illustration and publishing projects relating to it, including works by Oscar Wilde.

While Ricketts was a multi-talented painter, sculptor, theatre designer and art critic and art historian, Shannon's orientation was primarily towards the fine arts. He took up lithography in 1888 as an independent printmaking rather than an illustrative medium and by the 1890s he was the leading British lithographer. The same year he took up lithography and began exhibiting as a painter; he also achieved importance as a wood engraver, which is certainly apparent in this print. In all he made some 109 lithographs and was one of the very few lithographers working in England who had their own press at a time when the medium was in danger of being abandoned in serious art. Shannon's mature paintings often have sensuous, idyllic subjects. They show the influence of Titian, Watts and Puvis de Chavannes. His first one-man exhibition was held at The Leicester Galleries, London, in 1906.

Ricketts and Shannon together formed a magnificent collection of old master drawings and paintings, Egyptian and Greek antiquities, Japanese woodblock prints and Persian miniatures, also including a Van Dyck portrait of Archbishop Laud, which was confirmed as an original in the 1980s. 

Sadly, Shannon fell off a ladder in 1929. He suffered brain damage and required extensive nursing. Struggling to meet costs, Ricketts decided to sell the Laud portrait, but never found a buyer. Devastated by Shannon’s suffering and exhausted from work, Ricketts died of a heart attack in 1931. When Shannon himself died in 1937, the Ricketts and Shannon Collection entered the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, by bequest.

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<em>Hot August</em> is an example of Shannon's chiaroscuro woodcut technique. The original chiaroscuro woodcuts were early 16th  prints using two or more blocks printed in different colours; they do not necessarily feature strong contrasts of light and dark. They were first produced to achieve similar effects to chiaroscuro drawing.

Given the 'old master' credentials of the medium, it seems entirely appropriate that when Shannon revived it, the theme should be highly classicised. The circular composition depicts a woman resting on her knees, naked to the waist and seen from behind as she plucks bunches of grapes from a vine, handing them to a small, putto-like figure in the centre. Lying across the image, a half-naked woman, reclines, rather Venus-like, in a doorway.

See:

Fitzwilliam Museum, 'Biography Charles de Sousy Ricketts (1866-1931) & Charles Haslewood Shannon (1863-1937)', https://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/hiddenhistories/biographies/bio/friendship/rickettsshannon_biography.html

Wikipedia, 'Chiaroscuro Woodcuts', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodcut#Chiaroscuro_woodcuts

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art  November 2018