Gate of Justice, Granada

In relation to his obvious prowess as a printmaker, there is surprisingly and disappointingly little information that is readily accessible about Sydney Litten (1887-1934). Even the date of his death is often wrongly given as 1949 because of the demise that year of a near namesake, Sidney Litton.

Litten studied art at St. Martin's School of Art and etching at the Royal College of Art under Frank Short and became Senior Master at St Martin's School, exhibiting at the Royal Academy and the New English Art Club. He did the majority of his work in Italy, the Netherlands and here Spain.  Fifty-one of his prints are recorded in the annual Fine Prints of the Year between 1926 and 1935. Like Whistler and McBey he did his etchings in series such as his Thames images and two Venice Sets of four prints each, done in 1928. Venice was the subject for fifteen etchings, exhibited until 1935, the year after his death in London. Sydney Litten was the father of the artist Maurice Sydney Litten (1919-1979).

The portrait painter and printmaker Andrew Freeth wrote of the older Litten: "To many friends he seemed a gentle faun. His work was sustained on two levels; one - traditional, sensitive, topographical realism, the other - imaginative and poetic...All his work is deeply sincere, soundly drawn and inspired by a genuine passion for nature and an awareness of the mystery which lies behind the usual world."

An etching/drypoint combination, Gate of Justice, Granada is printed on Litten's favoured green-tinted paper, and is currently the sole print by him in Te Papa's collection that depicts a Spanish location/theme. It could be very clichéd - man on donkey approaches viewer, having just emerged from a Moorish archway. It is anything but; Litten's tremulous signature style is tailor-made for the etching needle and convincingly conveys the venerably aged stone of the Gate of Justice (Puerta de la Justicia), one of the four gates of the Alhambra Palace, and dating from just yesterday - 1348!  It also shows that Litten could play that formidable Hispanophile printmaker Lionel Lindsay at his own game - and win.

See: The Annex Galleries, 'Sidney Mackenzie Litten Biography', https://www.annexgalleries.com/artists/biography/1413/Litten/Sidney

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art   September 2018