St. Botolph's, Boston

Frederick (commonly F.L.) Griggs(1876-1938), was a distinguished English etcher, architectural draughtsman, illustrator and early conservationist, associated with the late flowering of the Arts and Crafts movement in the Cotswolds. He was one of the first etchers to be elected to full membership of the Royal Academy.

Born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, he worked as an illustrator for the Highways and Byways series of regional guides for the publishers, Macmillans. In 1903 he settled at Dover's House, in the market town of Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds, and went on to create one of the last significant Arts and Crafts houses at 'New Dover's House'. There he set up the Dover's House Press, where he printed late proofs of the etchings of Samuel Palmer, amongst others. He collaborated with Ernest Gimson and the Sapperton group of craftsmen in architectural and design work in the area.

'Fred' Griggs converted to Catholicism in 1912, and set about producing an incomparable body of etchings, 57 meticulous plates in a Romantic tradition, evoking an idealised medieval England of pastoral landscapes and architectural fantasies of ruined abbeys and buildings. His best known etchings include <em>Owlpen Manor</em> dedicated to his friend and near neighbour, the architect-craftsman Norman Jewson, <em>Anglia Perdita</em>, <em>Maur's Farm</em>, <em>St Botolph's, Boston</em> and <em>The Almonry</em> (the last two are in Te Papa's collection). Collections of his etched work are held in major public collections worldwide.

Griggs was one of the finest and most respected etchers of his time. He was an influential leader of the British etching revival in the Twenties and Thirties, and "the most important etcher who followed in the Samuel Palmer tradition" (K.M. Guichard, British Etchers, 1977). He occupies a pole position in the Romantic tradition of British art: he links the world of Blake, Turner and Samuel Palmer to a younger generation of neo-Romantic artists, including Graham Sutherland, John Piper and Robin Tanner.

Griggs made a series of etchings devoted to some of the larger English churches, chiefly their towers. <em>St Botolph's, Boston</em> is regarded as the most important as well as being in some respects the most beautiful - both in the flesh and in this superb etching. Its remarkably tall tower is paradoxically known as the 'Boston Stump'.

The Benedictine traditions of the town, which appears to have grown up about a monastery founded, according to Saxon Chronicle, in 654 by St Botolph, no doubt partly prompted the artist's inscription: "To his dear friend Gregory Ould, Monk of the Order of St Benedict, in whose music the church rejoices, also to St Botolph, illustrious Abbot of the same Order, and of the great and goodly church here depicted the Heavenly Patron, this work is dedicated by the artist with grateful heart'. Dom. Ould was an expert on liturgical music. The Griggs admirer, Jerrold Moore, wrote of this etching's 'all encompassing light' that 'had two attributes - clarity and diffusion. Griggs spread them round his image of the great tower with an economy that measured his mastery.'

See:

F.A. Comstock, <em>A Gothic Vision: F.L. Griggs and his Work</em> (Oxford and Boston, 1966, reprinted 1978)

The Fine Art Society, <em>Samuel Palmer and his Friends </em>(London, 2012), https://thefineartsociety.com/usr/documents/exhibitions/list_of_works_url/74/palmer-catalogue.pdf

Gerrish Fine Art, 'F.L. Griggs (1876-1938)', https://www.gerrishfineart.com/griggs-fl-st-botolphs-boston-etching~2211

Wikipedia, 'F.L. Griggs', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._L._Griggs

Dr Mark Stocker    Curator, Historical International Art    April 2018