The limestone rock

In his lifetime, Sydney Lee (1866-1949) was widely acclaimed for his paintings and prints of landscapes and architectural subjects that he sought out in his travels around Britain and on the Continent. The last exhibition to showcase his work was staged in 1945, four years prior to the artist’s death. Since then, his stature has been reduced to little more than a footnote in the history of 20th-century British art. His works have never been catalogued and his many, varied contributions to printmaking have received scant appraisal.

The Colosseum in Rome; a mountain fortress high in the Swiss Alps; the city walls of Segovia and the Basilica de San Vicente at Avila; the limestone outcrops of Dovedale in the English Peak District; Sydney Lee travelled near and far in search of such varied and monumental subjects. He became known and acclaimed for his ‘studies of picturesque old buildings … rich in the patina and atmosphere of history’; but Lee was also a pioneer, an early exponent of wood engraving as a fine art medium, colour woodcuts in the Japanese manner, as well as tonal intaglio printmaking. A versatile painter-printmaker, he produced drypoints, aquatints, mezzotints, lithographs, wood engravings and woodcuts. Few artists working in Britain during the first quarter of the 20th century were in command of such a broad range of graphic media.

Lee was a member of the Royal Academy of Arts and the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers as well as numerous other professional bodies. His works are now represented – albeit rarely on view – in major museum collections from Australia and New Zealand to Canada and the USA. Yet despite his professional associations and the peer recognition he received in his lifetime, Lee never achieved lasting critical acclaim. The name he made for himself all but died with him. How could one of the ‘most versatile of artists associated with the Royal Academy’ so quickly fall into oblivion?

Lee was given well overdue attention and acclaim at an exhibition held at the Royal Academy and Aberystwyth University School of Art Gallery in 2013, with a catalogue raisonne by Robert Meyrick.

In order to 'render this large block more easily worked', it was constructed of four sections that could be bolted together when complete. In the first state, a horse, rider sounding his horn and greyhound enter the landscape from the left. Feeling that the horseman 'was not going to be an improvement on the general design', Lee re-engraved the bottom left block as pure landscape and issued the horseman as a separate edition, <em>Hail, Smiling Morn! </em>Even though <em>The limestone rock</em> was described in 1914 as 'distinguished among the best original wood engravings of our time by not only its pictorial qualities, its design, its well-balanced masses of tone, but by the expressive manner in which the material has been used, the absolute eloquence of the wood itself' (<em>Studio</em> 63: 19). Lee explained that he 'could do nothing with <em>The Limestone Rock</em>' as 'wood engraving had no support or general interest whatsoever.' Thirty to forty years it lay packed in a drawer when Harold Wright of Colnaghi's 'saw it and wished to see if there were possibilities of sales.' Thanks to a renewed interest in wood engraving, the print sold successfully and by 1943 the eidtion of 100 was exhausted.

<em>The limestone rock </em> is a 'win-win' work of art. Not only does it graphically reveal the perfection of Lee's wood-engraving technique as described above, it also depicts the geology that characterises Dovedale, in the Peak District, one of the most visited natural tourist sites in Britain, beloved of Byron, Tennyson and Ruskin. Lee leads the eye across across the river Dove, towards a wooden bridge resting on stone piles, behind which rises a large limestone outcrop, with dense trees growing either side. One of the famous local ashes stands in the left foreground, framing the composition. By packing the print with outcrops and trees, and largely eliminating the sky, Lee maximises the dramatic beauty of the locale. In 1943, he told a collector that he 'in Dovedale... one can see masses of limestone rock but the design and composition generally is entirely personal and nothing to be seen like it either there or elsewhere.'

This impression came from Harold Wright's collection and was presented to the National Art Gallery, forerunner of Te Papa, by his widow in 1965.

See:

Robert Meyrick, <em>Sydney Lee, Prints: a Catalogue Raisonné</em> (London: Royal Academy, 2013), no. 39 (I am grateful to Professor Meyrick for making this information available)

'Sydney Lee exhibition at the RA Aberystwyth', https://aberystwythuniversitycollections.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/sydney-lee-exhibition-at-the-ra-and-aberystwyth/

Wikipedia, 'Dovedale', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dovedale

Wikipedia, 'Sydney Lee (engraver)', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Lee_(engraver)

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art   November 2018