This is a book of poems by Florence Elon and illustrated by Warwick Hutton in 1984, The Keepsake Press.
Florence Elon, A young poet of impressive range, who draws on continental European, Jewish and cosmopolitan roots, and whose sense of exile is pervasive.
MY EYELIDS OPEN My eyelids open from a thought of you to your half-covered shape beside me, blurred as rain slanting against our window now: chilled slopes & hollows of your face surprise my fingertips, that slide across flesh puckering between each forehead line; a white flash of the sky lights up your eyes. Our bodies, turning towards each other, close like halves of a book. Taut mass of your thighs & torso, that my own curves press into, burns as you sway: warm being next to mine, in this full touch, clay moulding against clay- beside which, other acts are partial, all thoughts, substitutes- change dream to fact.
LINES FOR AN ALBUM For sport, long summer days, falling in love, we took snapshots of graves on the outskirts of Rome. Caged in gold wire a stage crowned the headstone: two angels in mid-air hovered on silver wings, holding lit bulbs round a Madonna figurine- rose-lipped, pearl-robed- smiling into our lens. I spread the finished prints on our tile floor one late September afternoon. They show, in blacks & whites: Madonnas’ teeth missing, bulbs burnt-out, & round the stone- boll-wisp, wing-bone.
The work of Warwick Hutton is a bit of a rarity in the UK sadly. In Cambridge (where I live) he is known as a teacher as he was head of Fine Art at the Cambridge School of Art. Across the UK he is known as a painter and wood engraver and internationally he is remembered as an illustrator.
Hutton was born in England to an artistic family originally from New Zealand. His father was the glass engraver John Hutton (famous for the windows at Coventry) and his mother was Helen (Nell) nee Blair a talented painter. In 1939 the couple had twins, Macaillan (Cailey) John Hutton and Warwick (Wocky) Blair Hutton.
Warwick attended the Colchester School of Art where John O’Connor was the Principle and John Nash was teaching Botanical drawing. Richard Chopping was also teaching there. There Hutton met Elizabeth Mills and they were married in 1965.
Warwick Hutton – Two illustrations from Cats Free and Familiar, 1975
Warwick was working as an illustrator while helping his father engrave and install the windows for Coventry Cathedral. He worked for small private presses and major publishers, from the The Keepsake Press (Throwaway Lines, Cats Free and Familiar, Rider And Horse.) to the Cambridge University Press and their limited edition Christmas Book series (Waterways of the Fens, A Printer’s Christmas Books).
One of Hutton’s illustrations appeared in John O’Connors book The Technique Of Wood Engraving. Three years later Warwick published his own book Making Woodcutswith Academy Editions Ltd.
The major successes for Warwick Hutton were to come with a series of retelling of Bible Stories (Noah and the Great Flood, Jonah and the Great Fish, Moses in the Bulrushes) and Grimm’s Tales (Beauty and the Beast, The Nose Tree, The Tinderbox, The Sleeping Beauty) all of these internationally published.
ウォリックハットン – ねむりひめ, 1979
My two favourites are the Adam and Eve story for it not being shy about nakedness in children’s books and Sleeping Beauty for the wonderful use of the rose thorns and the patterns used throughout the book.
Warwick Hutton – Illustration from The Sleeping Beauty, 1986
The most attention came for Hutton when he worked with Susan Cooper, the author best known for The Dark Is Rising series. Hutton illustrated three books for Cooper: The Selkie Girl, Tam Lin and the Silver Cow for her, many of these are still in American libraries.
The later series of books by Hutton were re-telling of Greek Myths, Odysseus and the Cyclops, Persephone, Perseus, Theseus And The Minotaur the latter gaining much attention as mentioned in the New York Times Children’s Book Award review below:
The gifted British watercolorist turns to Greek myth and captures the bravery of young Theseus, the terrifying half-human Minotaur and the haunting beauty of ancient Crete. Here, as in all his other books, the ocean scenes have astonishing intensity and power. †
Hutton collaborated with other authors illustrating their books: Margaret & Raymond Chang on The Cricket Warrior: A Chinese Tale and James Sage on To Sleep.
Warwick Hutton – Illustration from The Cricket Warrior, 1994
Becoming Head of the Foundation course at the Cambridge School of Art Hutton was able to encourage the students to publish their works and set up and edited
Private View: The Journal from the Cambridge School of Art. The magazine republished works by famous artists as well as the students own work.
As a teacher at the Cambridge School of Art, Warwick provided the Council with a painting as part of the Original Works for Children in Cambridgeshire, part of the Pictures for Schools series. The Pictures for Schools project came out of, and alongside many other famous ‘utopian’ projects like Contemporary Lithographs (1937-38), AIA Everyman’s Prints (1940) and the School Prints series of lithographs where major artists would be paid to design a lithograph that would be printed in thousands and then sold to schools cheaply.
In the founding of the Pictures for Schools project Nan Youngman wanted to have paintings more than prints from artists. Early contributors were L. S. Lowry, Tirzah Garwood, Stephen Bone and Bernard Cheese. After some decades it was taken over by Walter Hoyle who was the head of Printmaking at the Cambridge School of Art. Together they encouraged their student’s to donate works to the collection to be hung in schools.
Hutton’s painting of ‘Adam and Eve’ followed with a book he published in 1987 under the same name by Hutton with Atheneum Books.
Warwick Hutton – Adam and Eve, 1986 (In My Collection)
Hutton died of cancer in 1994 in Cambridge, England. An audiobook of Jonah and the Great Fish is for sale in the USA as an audiobook and a video can be found here. Interior of Noah’s Ark can be purchased as a card from Orwell Press Art Publishing.
Private View: The Journal from the Cambridge School of Art.
Bibliography
Throwaway Lines by Gavin Ewart, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1964
Waterways of the Fens by Peter Eden, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1972
Making Woodcuts by Warwick Hutton, 1974
Practical Gemstone Craft by Helen Hutton. Illustrated by Warwick Hutton. 1974.
Cats Free and Familiar by Robert Leach, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton. 1975
Rider and Horse by Martin Booth, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton. 1976
Noah and the Great Flood re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1977
Mosaic Making Techniques by Helen Hutton, 1977
The Sleeping Beauty re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1979
The Nose Tree re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1981
Private View – Cambridge School of Art Magazine Editor and co-editor, 1982-1989
The Silver Cow: A Welsh Tale by Susan Cooper. Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1983
Flesh of His Flesh – Poems by Florence Elon, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1984
Beauty and the Beast re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1985
Jonah and the Great Fish re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1986
Moses in the Bulrushes re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1986
The Selkie Girl by Susan Cooper. Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1986
Adam and Eve – The Bible Story re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton. 1987
The Tinderbox by Hans Christian Andersen and re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1988
Theseus And The Minotaur re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1989
To Sleep by James Sage. Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1990
Tam Lin by Susan Cooper, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1991
The Cricket Warrior – A Chinese Tale retold by Margaret & Reymond Chang, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton
Perseus re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1993
Persephone re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1994
Odysseus and the Cyclops by Homer and re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1995.
A retelling of the Bible story and part of a series of stories published by Hutton on the Bible for release in America, the UK. It was also translated into French and German. It won the 1984 Boston Globe Horn Book Award for Picture Books and was nominated for the 1984 New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book. These videos were produced for the American Librarys to show and as teaching aids. They were also broadcast on USA Public TV. Not Animations but Icongraphic (the illustrations with a narrator and panning).
This is a post about the Cambridgeshire County Council Pictures For Schools Collection. It was a brave project founded in 1947, in part as a reaction to the brutalities of the war, but also to brighten up classrooms and schools with modern works of art and improve the minds of young children.
I am apt to using the word utopian a lot, but personally I believe projects like these were important in rebuilding Britain after the war. Not just bringing art into the home, but taking it to the public spaces; from the windows in Coventry Cathedral to the Festival of Britain, there was a manufacturing ‘brave new world’ of Britain and they used the artists as part of the team, maybe from champions of design like Robin Darwin at the Royal College of Art and exhibitions like Britain Can Make It in 1946.
The driving force behind the Pictures for Schools project was painter and educator Nan Youngman, art adviser to Cambridgeshire’s Director of Education, Henry Morris. Youngman was a student of painting at the Slade from 1924-1927, winning a prize at the Slade in 1926. She painted still, but focused on education for most of her life.
The ideas motivating Pictures for Schools were very much of their time. During and after the Second World War, as the rebuilding of Britain was debated in both the public and political spheres, educators called for art education to be given a central position in the new school system. This received support from the Ministry of Education, as part of a project to promote British culture, improve the public’s standards of taste and create a new generation of citizens and educated consumers who were capable of exercising judgement in aesthetic matters and making informed choices and purchases.
The Pictures for Schools project came out of and alongside many other famous ‘utopian’ projects like the Contemporary Lithographs (1937-38), AIA Everyman’s Prints (1940) and the School Prints series of lithographs where major artists would be paid to design a lithograph that would be printed in thousands and then sold to schools cheaply.
Youngman was involved in the Everyman’s Prints series and it may have helped inspire the running of Pictures for Schools.
In the founding of the Pictures for Schools project, one of Youngman’s big successes was after she accompanied Morris to London in 1945 to buy a painting by L.S.Lowry from the Lefevre Gallery for 30gns for the Cambridge Schools Art Collection as part of Pictures for Schools. At the start of a recession in 2009 the Cambridge County Council sold it for £541,250 at Christie’s. The commission on that sale would have been around £125k.
L. S. Lowry – A Market Place, Berwick-upon-Tweed, 1935
The rest of the works were due to go up for sale with Christie’s too, some of the works I own still have catalogue assignment stickers from the auction house on the back, but with the economic climate the Cambridge Council pulled the collection from auction and in 2017 they would come up again for sale with another auction house.
Although Nan Youngman was the organiser and originator of Pictures for Schools, she had the support of long-running exhibition secretaries, who themselves had interesting backgrounds and careers.
Slade-trained painter and writer Sylvia Pollak was the first Organising Secretary. She had, like Youngman and many of their circle, links with the Artists’ International Association and the Women’s International Art Club.
She was succeeded by art historian, writer and lecturer Alison Kelly, who had a particular interest in furniture and pottery, from 1950-1957, when she resigned to spend more time lecturing… During the war, Kelly had been flown around the country working on camouflage schemes for possible bombing targets such as factories.
Katharine Baker, who had been treasurer for the Society for Education through Art, took over from 1958-1967. She had previously worked for the British Institute for Adult Education, which during the war organised good design exhibitions, put pictures in air raid shelters, armed services establishments and British Restaurants, and sent exhibitions to outlying districts. She received a New Year’s day MBE in 1948 for her work on the ‘Art for the People’ travelling exhibitions.
Finally, Joan Bartlett was Organising Secretary from 1967 until after the exhibitions’ close in 1969, when the exhibitions were held at the Royal Academy’s Diploma Galleries.
Stephen Bone – Yachts Racing at Loosdrecht, (In My Collection)
The Stephen Bone painting above was bought direct from the artist himself as on the back are various notes and bills on Bone’s headed paper.
Youngman donated some of her paintings and linocuts to the collection, other artists in the collection are like a who’s who of British Art. Gertrude Hermes, Richard Bawden, John Piper, Anthony Day, Patrick Hughes, Enid Marx, Michael Rothenstein, Malvina Cheek, Robert Tavener, Julia Ball, Peter Nuttall, Richard Beer, George Chapman, Alistair Grant, Edwin La Dell, Rosemary Ellis, Tirzah Garwood and Evelyn Dunbar are but a few.
Nick Lyons – Between You and Me, 1977 (In My Collection)
As the Pictures for Schools scheme ended in the 1960s, in Cambridge the project continued under the name ‘Original Works for Children in Cambridgeshire’.
Malvina Cheek – Cornstooks at Furlongs, 1962 (In My Collection)
The Malvina Cheek drawing above came with some provenance.
I was staying at Furlongs when I drew the Corn Stooks . It was then a magical place, a shepherds cottage set in the shadow of the Downs. A gap in the wall leads up to the Downs. There was no electricity, no gas, only oil lamps and wood fires; a telephone the only concession to modern life.
In the fields alongside the cottage were pyramids of corn. The exciting shapes of the corn stooks attracted me. There was only time to draw, my daughter was very young, so I made studies hoping to develop them later. I also drew Dick Freeman, the farmer from whom Peggy leased her part of the cottage; he used an adjacent room where he rested after tending his sheep. There was always a pleasant speaking voice, a fine hooked nose and large hands like those in a Permeke drawing. Later I would use both the drawings of corn stooks and of Dick the farmer, I was commissioned to illustrate Gulliver’s Travels
Cheek also worked as part of the Recording Britain project.
Bernard Cheese – The Lemon Seller (In My Collection)
Walter Hoyle the Great Bardfield artist took over the scheme in the 1970s. Hoyle donated a few pictures and convinced other artists to donate works to the project too. Hoyle came to be involved as he was working at the Cambridge School of Art, now part of the Anglia Ruskin University. He would teach printmaking in the St Barnabas Press, a premises that the art school rented and he would encourage his pupils to donate a print to the collection. It may also explain how a fellow Bardfield artist, Bernard Cheese gets into the collection. Hoyle retired from teaching in 1985, moving from Cambridge to Hastings and Dieppe.
Warwick Hutton – Adam and Eve, 1986 (In My Collection)
We know the Original Works for Children in Cambridgeshire continued until 1985 when the project was run by the council and in the mid 1990s, the Council wound down the project citing the expenses of transporting the art around, hanging and administration costs and the works were stored in a shed outside Huntington Library and in a community centre in Papworth for the next 15 years.
The works by Walter Hoyle and Warwick Hutton in the collection were given with expenses for framing to the artists. Warwick Hutton’s painting of ‘Adam and Eve’ followed with a book he published in 1987 under the same name by Hutton with Atheneum Books.
Poul Webb – Petersfield (In My Collection)
Many of the works that Hoyle encouraged his students to make were prints, Poul Webb remembered making the print above in various colourways to me when I contacted him and he now works mostly as a painter with a totally different style. The picture below by Glyn Thomas is unlike his style now too, he works in drawings and etchings but Hoyle must have been an interesting man to work under as many of the artworks have a bit of Rothenstein or Bawden in them, I guess due to the Bardfield connections.
Glyn Thomas – Corn Exchange, Cambridge, 1965 (In My Collection)
It wasn’t just Bernard Cheese and Walter Hoyle that had works in the collection from Great Bardfield. Tizah Garwood had a painting in the collection of two donkeys. Chloe Cheese also had two prints in the collection.
Tirzah Garwood – Nathaniel and Patsy
Chloë Cheese – Figs and Coffee, 1972 (In My Collection)
Walter Hoyle is in danger of being one of the forgotten Great Bardfield artists due to the lack of information on him.
Hoyle was born in Rishton, Lancashire in July 1922. Hoyle’s artistic
education started at the Beckenham School of Art in 1938,
I persuaded my local art school to accept me, and presented as evidence of my serious intent, a series of drawings much influenced by Walt Disney. †
From Beckenham, Hoyle gained a place at as a student at the Royal College
of Art from 1940-42 and again from 1947-48 after serving in the
Second World War. During Hoyle’s time at the RCA one of his tutors was
Edward Bawden, who encouraged him to develop watercolours and
printmaking.
Walter Hoyle at home in Great Bardfield, NPG, taken by Geoffrey Ireland.
It was 1940, the phoney war was to about to end and the college was evacuated from London to Ambleside in the Lake District, famous for poets rather than artists. It was here that I was first introduced to printmaking – lithography – by a friend called Thistlethwaite, a fellow student from Oswaldtwistle (although these names are true, I mention them only because I like the sound they make). He prepared a litho stone for me with a beautiful finely ground surface and instructed me how to draw in line and wash. †
In 1948, During the RCA Diploma show, a visitor was so impressed by Hoyle’s work that he was offered seven months’ work in the Byzantine Institute in Istanbul, Hoyle accepted, the work he saw there made a strong impression. Italian art and architecture also influenced him at that time.
Walter Hoyle – Church Moon, Little Samford (In My Collection) ,1957.
Early in 1951 when Bawden was commissioned by the Festival of Britain to produce a mural for the Lion and Unicorn Pavilion on the South Bank,
it was Hoyle that he chose to assist him on account of his great talent. During that summer Bawden invited Hoyle on a holiday to Sicily.
Edward asked to see my watercolours. He looked very carefully and quizzed me about them, and in general was complimentary and encouraging. I felt I had passed some kind of ‘examination. ♠
It was this holiday together that Hoyle would scribe into a limited edition booklet of 10 in 1990 and into a book in 1998 – “To Sicily with Edward Bawden” a limited edition of 350 copies with a forward by Olive Cook.
Walter Hoyle – Hill town in Sicily, ex Cambridge City Council, 1951.
In 1952 Hoyle took over the painting of another mural, the dome of St Mary Abchurch, London. The church had been blitzed in September 1940,
and the original mural was being restored by E. W. Tristan, but when Tristan died, Hoyle completed the work. ‡
Walter Hoyle – The cover for the Great Bardfield Exhibition booklet.
The move to Great Bardfield: Hoyle moved first to Great Bardfield in 1952, living for a time in a farm cottage on the outskirts of Bardfield near Great Lodge Farm. He lived and worked in the Great Bardfield area for twenty-two years and exhibited with the Bardfield artists in 1954, 1955 and 1956 when they would open their houses to the public for one weekend a year, rather than relying on London galleries. Hoyle met his wife, the ceramists and poster designer
Denise Hoyle at at one of the Great Bardfield “open house” exhibitions in 1956, when his work was on show at George Chapman’s house.
It may have been Edward Bawden’s painting classes and lectures at Brick House, or being in the hilly Essex countryside but it around this time that Hoyle became interested in English romantic painting: the work of Turner, Blake and Palmer and also in French art. Like other members of Great Bardfield, Hoyle designed for interiors with wallpapers and fabrics for Coles, Sandersons and the Wallpaper Manufacturers Limited.
One of Hoyle’s most popular works for book illustration came with a commission for the Folio Society in 1968 with Shirley by Charlotte Bronte.
Walter Hoyle Design for Sandersons
Teaching: Walter Hoyle has taught at various art schools: St. Martin’s, London, 1951-60; the Central School of Art, London, 1960-64; and the Cambridge School of Art, 1964-85.
Walter Hoyle left Great Bardfield and moved to Bottisham, Cambridgeshire, to teach at the Cambridge School of Art in their printmaking department. While at Cambridge, he launched the Cambridge Print Editions, publishers of the magazine of the Cambridge School of Art, “Private View” co-edited by Warwick Hutton, which he started and which included interesting extracts from the work of famous artists and writers such as Patrick Heron and Edward Ardizzone, as well as articles by
students and graduates of the school.
Hoyle took over the collection of ‘Original Works for Children in Cambridgeshire’, an art project for City of Cambridge Committee for Education. Hoyle donated a picture and convinced other artists to give works to the project too. He retired from teaching in 1985 to move to Hastings and Dieppe. Hoyle died in 2000.
Walter Hoyle – Great Lodge Farm, 1952 (In My Collection)
Exhibitions and Collections: Hoyle exhibited internationally working outside of the Bardfield set. Exhibitions were not only at the Byzantine Institute Gallery in Paris in 1950, but in 1952 he showed at the Leicester Galleries, London. He was featured in many mixed exhibitions in London and the provinces, including the Royal Academy summer exhibitions and Kettles Yard, Cambridge (1972). Walter Hoyle is represented in many public and private collections, among them the Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris, the Victoria and Albert and the British Museums, the Tate Gallery, the Walker Art Gallery, the Whitworth Art Gallery, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Sheffield Art Gallery, the Manchester City Art Gallery, Editions Alecto Gallery, London, and the Palace of Westminster and the Fry Art Gallery in Saffron Walden.
He painted murals for the Natural History Museum, for the Jamestown Festival, USA, and for the Sealink ship “St. David”.
Editions of his prints have been commissioned by Editions Alecto, Christie’s Contemporary Art, Neve International, the British Oxygen Company, the Folio Society and St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge.
Walter Hoyle – St Catherine’s with Acanthus, (In My Collection), 1966
† Printmaking Today, Volume 7, 1998. page 9-10. ‡ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary_Abchurch ♠ To Sicily with Edward Bawden, Previous Parrot Press, 1998. The Great Bardfield Exhibition by Gerald Marks, Realism, August —
September 1955 ♣ http://www.fryartgallery.org/the-collection/search-viewer/691/artist/15/Walter-Hoyle–/22
From Private View: The Journal from the Cambridge School of Art. Spring 1986.
Walter Hoyle – Dieppe Harbour, 1986
I thought this letter was so colourful and a rare insight into the world of Walter Hoyle. Sadly little is known online of Hoyle as books are yet to be penned. But this is a rather funny view on his last days at the Cambridge School of Art and Hoyle’s quest for a coast house.
First a brief biography of Walter Hoyle. Painter and printmaker, Hoyle was born in Lancashire. He studied at Beckenham School of Art from 1938 alongside Bernard Cheese, then moved on to the Royal College of Art in 1940. There he was mentored and educated under Edward Bawden, they became close friends and Hoyle later moved to Great Bardfield to live and work alongside Bawden. Hoyle wrote a book called ‘To Sicily with Edward Bawden’ with Olive Cook and also illustrated editions for the Folio Society. After moving to Bottisham, Cambridgeshire, he taught at the Cambridge School of Art, placing great emphasis on printmaking. Hoyle worked amassing the Collection of Original Works for Children in Cambridgeshire, an art project for City of Cambridge Committee for Education. Hoyle retired in 1985 to move to Hastings and Dieppe.
A personal note from Walter Hoyle. The new editor of ‘Private View’ (Warwick Hutton) has requested a personal note on my activities since relinquishing my commitment to the Cambridge School of Art (and ‘Private View’) in July, 1985.
I spend most of the summer with my family in Dieppe where we have a flat in the old part of town, near the harbour. As usual, I enjoyed Dieppe and spent my time drawing, painting and recovering from the cool flatness of Cambridge. However, I think that it will take more than one summer to regenerate the energy I spent and lost over the years at Cambridge School of Art. I do not regret the time spent with students — that was very worthwhile — but I do regret the time and energy waster on trying to justify art to the almost blind administration and national authorities, and as somebody said — in the land of the blind the one-eyed is King — or something like that.
At the end of the summer I returned to Cambridge, my faith strengthened by Dieppe and my romantic ideals partially restored. We had decided to sell our Cambridge (Bottisham) house and move to the south coast — it would be easier to commute to Dieppe.
So we cleaned up the house and put it on the market and to my surprise it sold quickly, within three or four days. The prospective buyers who vied the house were fascinated by my studio and etching press — I do not wear a beret or smock, nor do I sport a beard but I think they also found me a curiosity and to top it all, my wife is French and they loved her accent — obviously the right combination for selling property.
We had to dash off to the south coast to look for a house. We started at Brighton — too brash, polished and pretty, Newhaven — a depressingly ugly place, Eastbourne — alright for Aunty, and then Hastings — interesting, rather shabby, a town that has seen better days, very hilly, amazing architecture and many charming Victorian houses for sale. So Hastings it is, a Victorian house with marvellous views above the Old Town.
From the Hastings house I can look out of the window at the sea, this same sea that fills the harbour at Dieppe, and yet Hastings and Dieppe could not be more different, and this variance I find interesting and entertaining. Also, the sky here in Hastings often looks like a Turner or Constable, but viewed from Dieppe it reflects French painters — however, my aim is to work on my own observations and ideas and make both sides of the channel look Hoylish.
Walter Hoyle – St Catherine’s with Acanthus , 1966
This I found difficult to do in Cambridge, Its so complete and correct and no doubt the University and its architecture are partly to blame. There is a strong smell of education like sour wine and a lack of effervescence and creative activity, and a feeling prevails that education is the end product rather than the means.
I will now be crossing the channel frequently and I welcome the immediate stimulus of the two sides of La Manche.
