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Sir Muirhead Bone (1876-1953) was a Scottish artist known for his piquant drypoint etchings, draughtsmanship and watercolours. Bone originally trained as an architect at the Glasgow School of Art. After initially taking night classes, he turned to printmaking in 1898. Self-taught, his early works likely took the style of those he studied, chiefly Charles Meryon and James Whistler. In 1901 Bone moved to London, quickly gaining a reputation, moving in the same circles as art collector Campbell Dodgson and D.Y. Cameron, a contemporary of Bone in etching and a fellow Scotsman. In 1916, Bone successfully campaigned for the role of the first official British War Artist, filling the position in both World War One and World War Two. Between the World Wars, Bone continued to build up a considerable reputation, exhibiting frequently in both London and New York. A mentor of many young artists, he served as a trustee of the Tate Gallery, the National Gallery and Imperial War Museum. He was knighted in 1937.
Bone's watercolours and lustrous drawings are evidence of his incredible skill in depicting often grim wartime landscapes and human activity. However, it is in his drypoints that we can see his true mastery over architectural detail. His strengths are in rendering line and balance to create dynamic cityscapes, concerned primarily with the existence of buildings in all their states, including the comings and goings of their construction. Bone's architectural training is a fetchingly persistent ‘backbone’ in these works.
In April 1923, Bone met the Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad while the two were sailing together from Glasgow to America. A year before Conrad’s death in 1924, Bone made three portraits of the writer, of which this portrait refers to Conrad’s love of classical music. Minimal, yet beautifully descriptive, the portrait speaks to Bone’s skill in capturing the essence of the sitter without overworking the drypoint; the languid lines of Conrad’s clothes billowing against the harsher lines of his beard and jaw. Following a tradition set by the etched portraits of the Old Masters such as Anthony van Dyck, where the head of the subject is the primary focus, Bone’s portraits also focused primarily on the head of the sitter, giving little depth or tone to the rest of the body. Another example of this in Bone’s work is Gavin asleep (1912), a Christmas card the Bone family sent out in 1913, which depicts only the sleeping head of the artist’s son in the upper left, while the rest of the picture plane is blank. Bone’s portraiture is a reminder of his descriptive talents outside of cityscapes.
There are two impressions of this print, both of which were presented to Te Papa's predecessor, Wellington advertiser, collector and philanthropist, Sir John Ilott. The other print is 1969-0020-1
Sources:British Museum,
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/term_details.aspx?bioId=131762David Cohen, ‘Bone, Muirhead’, Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press, accessed, 6 December 2017
Harold J. Wright, ‘Sir Muirhead Bone; Catalogue of prints from 1908 to 1939 being a continuation of Campbell Dodgson’s Catalogue of etchings and drypoints from 1898-1907’, Photocopied by the British Museum from the typescript in the possession of Messrs P. & D. Colnaghi, August, 1981, pl. 385. pp. 132-133.
National Galleries Scotland, https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/sir-muirhead-bone
Wikipedia, 'Muirhead Bone', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muirhead_Bone
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art August 2018