seaby & the birds

Allen William Seaby, (1867-1953), Professor of Art at Reading University, was an influential exponent of Japanese style woocuts. Although primarily a printmaker, Seaby also painted in oil and watercolour and illustrated a number of bird books, including Kirman's The British Bird Book (1910-13) and The British Sporting Bird (1936).

Seaby's body of work is a fine example of the influence of Japanese printmaking in England during the 1920s and 1930s.

The British colour woodcuts ... are a Western adaptation of the 19th-century Japanese Ukiyo-e prints. They constitute a strand of the 'aesthetic dialogue' between Japan and the West that is in many ways similar to the collaboration between the Japanese potters and pioneer studio potters in Britain. Both potters and printmakers investigated and adapted the methods and philosophies of Japanese art and crafts in their own work, and both sought to learn from and exchange ideas with Japanese artists. 1

Allen Seaby was an influential exponent of the Japanese woodcut method; his bird and topographical prints often treated Western fauna and flora in a manner characteristic of so many Ukiyo-e prints of the early 19th century.

Walter J. Phillips wrote:
Some ten years ago I produced a score of bad etchings which made me, and many others I have no doubt, very unhappy. My thoughts were in color; consequently I had little sympathy with the convention of line as a means of expression; I came to abominate the cold unresponsive nature of metal, the smell of acid and oil, and the dirtiness of printing inks. I meditated sadly upon the fact that if Meryon had not become afflicted with color-blindness, he never could have forsaken canvas for copper, and that Michael Angelo must have love color, though he never had much time to pay with it, for Vasari said that he was so pleased with Martin Schongauer's print "St. Anthony tormented by the Devils" that he set himself to color it.

Then I recalled an article in "The Studio" by Allen W. Seaby on printing from wood-blocks, re-read it, and the mutation from desire to accomplishment resulted. A magazine article on such a subject may be inspiring, as this was emphatically, but its brevity precludes its use as a manual. I had, therefore, all the fun of experimenting blindly more or less, which perhaps fired my enthusiasm. Morley Fletcher's book unfortunately did not come my way until recently, or I would have been saved many pitfalls. However, he inspired Allen Seaby, who activated me, so that he merits my acknowledgements. I tender very grateful acknowledgments also to my fellow color-printers William Giles, Allen W. Seaby, Y. Urushibara, and Frances H. Gearhart, for sympathy and generous contributions in an interchange of ideas, and to the three first and to John Platt, A.J. Musgrove, and Martie Hardie of the Victoria & Albert Museum for permission to reproduce their work or prints in their possession.

W. J. Phillips
Winnipeg, Feb 28. 1926.

(phillips' own woodblock manual)