Sybil Andrews CPE

(British/Canadian, 1898-1992)

Fall of the Leaf 40.3 x 30.7 cm. (15 7/8 x 12 1/8 in.)

Footnotes

Literature
Stephen Coppel Linocuts of the Machine Age - Claude Flight and the Grosvenor School, England, 1995 (SA.30)

Sybil Andrews was one of the major artists of the Grosvenor School of Modern Art, a private British art school founded in Pimlico in 1925, where artist Claude Flight promoted the linocut as a medium for printmaking during the 1920s and 1930s.

Andrews grew up in Bury St Edmunds where she attended the local art school. She kept up her studies by correspondence during the First World War when she worked as an oxy-acetylene torch welder and the precision needed for this work was to prove useful in her artistic career. In 1925 she enrolled at the Grosvenor School, encouraged by fellow student Cyril Power, with whom she shared a studio and would collaborate on several commissions for London Transport.

Linocut was a practical and cost effective material and its textures were perfectly suited to the portrayal of the modern age. The relatively new technique required precision and innovation. The qualities of the linoleum meant that a limited number of blocks could be used (one for each colour), so the images had to be created using clean lines and bold shapes. Andrews had great technical ability and also a sense of what worked as a composition. Repeated patterns, sweeping lines and vibrant colours were used to express the pace of modern life, whether it pertained to technological advances or the rhythms of rural working life.

Andrews favoured scenes of rural life, people toiling in the fields and harvesting, taking inspiration from her home county of Suffolk. Several of her linocuts feature its rural landscapes and agricultural practices and in the present work, it provides the backdrop for a scene of pastoral working life.

A series of hatch marks in the linoleum suggest the pattern of the leaves and furrows in the soil. The curving forms of the trees and undulating ploughed fields give a sense of the physical exertion undertaken, whilst the warm Autumnal colours reference the changing seasons and underline the fact that man is working in harmony with nature.