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John Hall Thorpe

  1874 - 1947
 
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Home (large version) sold

Home (large version)   c.1919

Original woodcut, printed in colours.

Excellent signed proof impression with very strong, unfaded colours; printed in dark blue, green, orange and black inks. An exceptionally fine example tipped at upper corners into its original line mount.

SOLD



Forget-me-nots sold

Forget-me-nots   1922

Original woodcut, printed in colours.

Very good proof impression with fresh, unfaded colours.

SOLD



Cowslips sold

Cowslips   1922

Original woodcut, printed in colours.

Very good, bright signed proof impression with fresh, unfaded colours.

SOLD



The Chinese Vase sold

The Chinese Vase   1926

Original woodcut, printed in colours.

Variant colour proof, with all of the anemone stems printed in green ink (these stems were left blank in the normal edition); with the flowers printed in tones of grey, blue and pinkish orange, without striations on their petals; and with the vase printed in the mid-blue normally used for the central flower. Signed proof, with Hall Thorpe’s London publication line and American copyright date of 1926.

SOLD

 

The Australian-born artist John Hall Thorpe had learnt the art of colour woodblock printing in the early 1890’s while still living in Sydney; however, he was not to use this art form as a creative medium until many years after his move to London in 1902. Like the key members of the Grosvenor School of Modern Art, Hall Thorpe attended Heatherley’s School of Art and by the end of the First World War he had begun to make the style of colour woodcut through which he was to achieve lasting fame. He held his first one man show of his colour woodcuts in London in 1918 and his success was established almost immediately. Hall Thorpe became one of the foremost exhibitors at the Colour Woodcut Society, which was formed in 1920, and by 1930 his woodcuts were sold worldwide.

The gaily coloured original woodcuts of John Hall Thorpe became something of an international phenomenon during the 1920’s and 30’s. Designed with the specific intention of providing bright, colourful decoration, Hall Thorpe’s hand-made prints were produced as a reaction against what he saw as the dull, laborious realism of so much of the decoration in people’s homes at the time. These simple yet highly distinctive hand-made works were immensely popular in their day and will remain a definitive statement of interior design between the two World Wars. [more]