Castor

Born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, he worked as an illustrator for the Highways and Byways series of regional guides for the publishers, Macmillans. In 1903 he settled at Dover's House, in the market town of Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds, and went on to create one of the last significant Arts and Crafts houses at 'New Dover's House'. There he set up the Dover's House Press, where he printed late proofs of the etchings of Samuel Palmer, amongst others. He collaborated with Ernest Gimson and the Sapperton group of craftsmen in architectural and design work in the area.

'Fred' Griggs converted to Catholicism in 1912, and set about producing an incomparable body of etchings, 57 meticulous plates in a Romantic tradition, evoking an idealised medieval England of pastoral landscapes and architectural fantasies of ruined abbeys and buildings. His best known etchings include Owlpen Manor dedicated to his friend and near neighbour, the architect-craftsman Norman Jewson, Anglia Perdita, Maur's Farm, St Botolph's, Boston and The Almonry (the last two are in Te Papa's collection). Collections of his etched work are held in major public collections worldwide.

Griggs was one of the finest and most respected etchers of his time. He was an influential leader of the British etching revival in the Twenties and Thirties, and "the most important etcher who followed in the Samuel Palmer tradition" (K.M. Guichard, British Etchers, 1977). He occupies a pole position in the Romantic tradition of British art: he links the world of Blake, Turner and Samuel Palmer to a younger generation of neo-Romantic artists, including Graham Sutherland, John Piper and Robin Tanner.

Castor is one of Griggs's architectural fantasies, which often involved his historical imagination concerning the ruination brought about by the dissolution of the Catholic monasteries and abbeys in the 16th century. Castor, a name probably coined by Griggs, could be one such victim, especially evident in the foreground domestic architecture. Towards the right, we see a magnificent Romanesque church tower topped by a relatively stumpy gothic spire, rendered in fainter, silvery inks to suggest distance and grandeur. A solitary figure, in what appears 17th century dress, emphasises the pathos and the enormity of the then recent destruction.

See Wikipedia, 'F.L. Griggs', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._L._Griggs

Dr Mark Stocker    Curator, Historical International Art    April 2018