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for Sir Muirhead Bone
Sir Muirhead Bone
British, 1876 - 1953
Scottish draughtsman and etcher. The son of a journalist, he was apprenticed to an architect, but he took evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art. Two early ink studies of Glasgow were reproduced in the last issue of the Yellow Book in 1897. He began to study printmaking in 1898, and it was in the media of drypoint and etching that he produced his most distinguished work. The enduring influence of Piranesi, Charles Meryon and Whistler was already apparent in his first portfolio, Six Glasgow Etchings (Glasgow, 1899). In 1901 he moved to London, where he was promoted by Dugald Sutherland MacColl, William Strang, Alphonse Legros and Henry Tonks, and where he became a member of the New English Art Club. In 1916, at the suggestion of William Rothenstein, Bone was appointed the first Official War Artist, serving with Allied forces on the Western Front and for a time with the Navy, producing drawings such as From the Bridge of a Battleship (1917; London, Tate). He was instrumental in the commissioning of fellow artists such as William Orpen, Eric Kennington and Wyndham Lewis and became a War artist again in 1940. Bone exhibited frequently at P & D Colnaghi & Co. Ltd in London and M. Knoedler & Co. in New York and built up a considerable reputation between the World Wars. Of the many books he illustrated, several were by members of his family, such as D. W. Bone’s Merchantmen at Arms (London, 1919) and James Bone’s The London Perambulator (London, 1926). His subject-matter was often inspired by his foreign travels: in 1923 he executed three portraits of the novelist Joseph Conrad during an Atlantic crossing (e.g. Joseph Conrad Listening to Music, drypoint, 1923; U. St Andrews), and the luxurious folio-edition of Old Spain (London, 1936) arose from an extended visit to Spain in 1929. His most characteristic images, however, were of urban change: construction and demolition sites, shipbuilding yards (e.g. Dry Dock, 1899; see Dodgson, 1909, no. 48) and war-damaged cities provided the pretexts for large-scale, ambitious compositions and broad panoramas punctuated by minutely observed details, as in the Demolition of St James’s Hall.
David Cohen. "Bone, Muirhead." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T009857 (accessed May 1, 2012).
Person TypeIndividual
French, 1864 - 1901
