Schwabe (Randolph)

the twelfth print in the second series of fifteen Contemporary Lithographs, a pioneering project to make original art available to the masses, either as affordable art for the home or for display in schools and other public institutions. It was the combined brainchild of the young manager of the Zwemmer Gallery, Robert Wellington, the passionate educationalist, Henry Morris, the artist, John Piper, in particular amongst a circle of young contemporary artists, mostly from the Royal College of Art, and the specialist printers, Oliver Simon and Harold Curwen, of the Curwen Press. Unlike the high quality reproduction prints that Wellington had hitherto been selling at Zwemmer’s as a way of disseminating mainly continental modern art, these prints were auto-lithographs, created by the artists’ own hands as original multiples. Randolph Schwabe (1885-1948) was somewhat older than his fellow contributors to this project, attending first the RCA and then the Slade as a teenager at the turn of the century. He went on to serve as an official war artist in WW1 before a very successful career as a popular teacher at Camberwell, Westminster and then the Slade where he succeeded the legendary Tonks as principal. His precise style, particularly in representing architecture, can certainly be considered instructive in this context, if bordering on the dry.

colour-printed auto-lithograph, 460 x 610mm. (18 x 24 in), [Artmonsky 22],