Corner of the Garden

Details

Artist

Dorrit Black

Title

Corner of the Garden

Year

c.1936

Medium

colour linocut on oriental paper edn.2/50

Size

25.5 x 30.5 cm (sight)

Details

signed with monogram in block lower right: DB

signed lower centre in pencil: Dorrit Black
inscribed lower left in pencil: Corner of the Garden 2/50

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Provenance

from the collection of Edith Lawrence, London

by descent to her nephew, London

by descent to his niece, London

Bonhams, London

private collection

Exhibited

An edition of this print was included in the following exhibitions:

Paintings by Dorrit Black, Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 1936, cat. no. 26

British Lino-cuts, Ward Gallery, London, 1936, cat. no. 39

Dorrit Black Memorial Exhibition, Royal South Australian Society of Arts, Adelaide, 1952, cat. no. 63 as The Garden

Drawing, Print and Watercolour, Contemporary Art Society of Australia, Adelaide, 1952, cat. no. 20 as The Garden

Exhibitions of Paintings by the late Dorrit Black, Hahndorf Academy Gallery, Adelaide, 1959, cat. no. 36 as The Garden

Dorrit Black 1891 - 1951, Art Gallery of South Australia & touring (AGNSW, Newcastle Art Gallery, Ewing & George Paton Galleries, University of Melbourne, 1975 - 76, cat. no. 60

Claude Flight and his Followers: The Colour Linocut Movement Between the Wars, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1992, cat. no. 28

Dorrit Black (1891 - 1951), Royal South Australian Society of Arts, Adelaide, 2011, cat. no. 33

Dorrit Black: Unseen Forces, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2014

Literature

Dorrit Black: Unseen Forces, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2014, col. illus. p. 204

North, Ian, Dorrit Black, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 1979, col. illus. p. 73

Further Information

Related Work:

A watercolour study for this print is in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia

Dorrit Black’s colour linocuts beautifully compliment her modernist ideals, with their simple, flattened forms; sense of graphic design; daring composition and bold use of colour. She studied printmaking at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London in 1927 with Claude Flight, a leading exponent and teacher of the linocut technique. Upon her return to Australia, Flight continued to promote Black’s linocut art, receiving works from her for exhibition in London, including in the First Exhibition of British Lino-Cuts (1929, Redfern Gallery) and subsequent annual exhibitions. It is likely that this particular print is the edition which was included in the British Lino-Cuts exhibition in 1936 and remained in the collection of Claude Flight, as the provenance for this work is from the collection of Edith Lawrence, Flight’s long-term partner. An edition of this image was also included in Black’s solo exhibition at Macquarie Galleries, Sydney in 1936, which mostly presented artworks inspired by her recent travels, particularly English watercolours. Corner of the Garden was the only new linocut to be included in that exhibition, described by Ian North as “a delightful if sentimental excuse, perhaps, to use the bright colours excluded from her watercolours of the period.”

Corner of the Garden certainly delights in the use of vibrant colour, bright red and ochre yellow contrasting against the green, with highlights of blue, and takes its inspiration from nature, as do the majority of her linocut subject matter. The work delights not only in colour but in pattern and shape, with dots and stars and curved lines and zigzags all building a complex composition. We feel the life force of a fertile garden depicted in sunlight and shadow, and there is perhaps a play between growth and manicured control, between nature and human interference, with elements such as a brick wall.

Black’s linocuts are usually on very thin oriental paper and it is remarkable that her prints survive today. Adding to their rarity, she usually limited her print run to only 50 but chose to print editions as needed, so it is unlikely that there are ever 50 prints of any one image in existence. In regard to Corner of the Garden, Coppel (Linocuts of the Machine Age by Stephen Coppel, Scolar Press, 1995) records only 3 unsigned proofs and that the edition is unknown, however it is thought there are only 6 in existence (according to Black’s notes as cited in Unseen Forces, AGSA, 2014) and only one other known to be signed like this edition.