Power and Andrews used
a separate block for each
colour, sometimes four or
five, and experimented with
the range of tones they could
get where the different blocks
overlapped. To succeed with
linocuts, they found, you must
banish details and simplify or
stylise the human figures. They
were especially attracted by
subjects that gave the effect of
speed and power — racing cars,
ice skaters, steeplechasers,
ballet dancers, the switchback
and swing boats at the
Wembley funfair. For their
London Transport posters
they showed action shots of
footballers, tennis players and
cricketers. Missing her
countryside childhood,
Andrews also made linocuts
of reapers with huge scythes
or great shire horses
ploughing, with gulls flocking
in their wake.“democratic” because anyone
could afford the raw materials.
Linoleum for flooring had been
on sale from the 1860s, and
offcuts could be picked up
free. To pare away the lino
round their images Power and
Andrews used a sharpened old
umbrella strut. You do not
need expensive equipment to
make colour prints with
linocut as you do for etching
and screen printing. Anyone
keen to try can buy a linocut
set online, which contains all
that you need, plus a rather
upmarket substitute for lino,
and you can make colour
prints on the kitchen table,
with no more equipment
than your fingers and the
back of a spoon to rub the
paper with. However, you
should not expect to get the
dazzling results that
Andrews and Power achieved,
or not at first anyway.COURTESY OF THE OSBORNE SAMUEL GALLERY. PORTRAITS COURTESY OF GLENBOW MUSEUM, CALGARYIn motion Whence &
Whither? by Cyril
Power, c 1930. Top:
Sybil Andrews
self-portrait, c 1938.
Above: Cyril Power
by Sybil Andrews,
c 1939They did not invent
coloured linocuts, the
medium that was to make
them famous. Continental
artists such as Kandinsky and
Gaudier-Brzeska had already
experimented with it when
Power’s and Andrews’s
art-school tutor, Claude Flight,
made it part of his course.
When Flight put on the first
exhibition of British linocuts in
July 1929 he included Gaudier-
Brzeska’s Wrestlers, as well as
work by Power and Andrews.
Flight called linocutsThe people’s art
Two artists who transformed the humble linocut into some of
the 20th century’s most striking images (and here’s how to do it)
ART
John Carey
Sybil & Cyril
Cutting Through Time
by Jenny Uglow
Faber £20 pp416
This book is a joy to read. That
will not come as a surprise to
Jenny Uglow’s many admirers.
But whereas the artists she has
previously written about, such
as Thomas Bewick and William
Hogarth, are well known, the
subjects of her new book, Sybil
Andrews and Cyril Power, may
be familiar only to those with a
special interest in printmaking.
They met in Bury StEdmunds after the First World
War. Andrews, who was trying
to be an artist, was painting a
watercolour of a local scene
and Power stopped to give her
some tips on perspective. He
was 26 years older, already an
established architect, and
author of a three-volume work
on medieval architecture. He
was also married, with four
children. Soon, though, he
and Andrews were painting
watercolours together, and
when Andrews signed on for
an art course in London,
Power abandoned his family
and joined her. It was
especially hard on his son,
Toby, who had won a
scholarship to Cambridge, but
had to get a job as a bank clerk
instead, to help support his
mother and siblings. Another
son became a bus driver.
Uglow is wonderful at
conjuring up atmospheres —
the poisonous gossip in Bury
when the elopement became
public, and the excitements of
jazz-age London, with
futurists, vorticists and
surrealists spouting their
manifestos, the new electric
billboards lighting up
Piccadilly Circus, packed
proms at the Queen’s Hall,
and the extending tentacles of
the London Underground for
which Andrews and Power
designed posters under the
joint name Andrew Power.
Things were tough at first,though. Andrews recalled how
she made a bowl of dripping
last a whole week. They had an
etching press at their workshop
in west London and survived
by making prints of the Oxford
and Cambridge colleges for the
tourist trade. One by Andrews
of Merton and Corpus Christi
is still a standard Oxford view.
They used a
sharpened
umbrella strut
to cut the lino
Neither of them took much
interest in politics, but
rumours of war grew
unignorable in the 1930s, and
they decided to move out of
London. Andrews bought a
thatched cottage in the New
Forest, and Power rebuilt and
added to it. Surrounded by
salt marshes, grazing deer and
New Forest ponies, they were
safe, but in November 1941 a
blitz on Southampton created
a firestorm that they could see
from miles away. Power, who
now had a full-time job with
the London county council,
spent weekends at the
cottage, but lived in digs in
London during the week.
Courageously, he joined a
Heavy Rescue Squad to save
trapped bomb victims.
Andrews, intent on doing
her bit, joined a boat-building
course, making small craft for
the admiralty, and gained her
diploma on her 44th birthday
in 1942. Her relationship with
Power had grown less intense
over the years, and on the
course, in 1943, she met and
fell in love with Walter Morgan.
He had lost his lower right arm
in the First World War, but
was still an active carpenter
and machinist. They married
in 1943 and emigrated to
Canada, where Walter set up a
boat company. Andrews never
felt at home among the peaks
and forests where bears and
cougars roamed. But she
continued to work and, for 30
years, gave evening classes in
painting and printing.
Meanwhile Power
swallowed his loss, and his wife
accepted him back without
demur. He helped to restore
London churches destroyed
in the war, and died in 1951,
aged 78. After her marriage,
Andrews strenuously denied
that she and Power had ever
been lovers, though everyone
had assumed they were, and
Uglow seems to think so
too. Andrews also bitterly
resented the assumption that
Power had been the boss. He
had always used her
workshop, she pointed out,
not vice versa. Morgan died
in 1986, aged 91, and
Andrews lived on for six
years without him. She
became increasingly religious,
tending towards Christian
Science, perhaps because it
was a church founded by a
woman. Her last linocut was
of Christ miraculously turning
water into wine at the
marriage in Cana. c