[BRANGWYN, Frank] SPARROW, Walter ShawBiblio.com
Prints & Drawings by Frank Brangwyn with some other Phases of his Art
1919réf. 134644London: John Lane The Bodley Head 1919. Very Good. London John Lane The Bodley Head 1919. Quarto x 288 pages with numerous illustrations plus 50 plates 6 double-page some in colour some with captioned tissue-guards. Buckram a little marked scuffed and sunned on the spine; endpapers offset and a little foxed with occasional light scattered foxing elsewhere; a very good copy. Provenance: Will Ashton with his Lionel Lindsay-designed bookplate on the front pastedown - a felicitous combination all round. English-born Sir John William Will Ashton 1881-1963 emigrated with his parents to Adelaide when he was a child; his father was the artist James Ashton. 'In 1900 Will left for England to work under the seascapist Julian Olsson at St Ives Cornwall. He spent the winter of 1902-03 at the Académie Julian Paris with E. Phillips Fox David Davies and Hans Heysen. He made frequent overseas trips sometimes with such artists as Lionel Lindsay and Charles Bryant; he returned again and again to Paris. He won the Wynne prize in 1930 and in 1939. Will Ashton had worked mainly in oils from about 1910. He was fascinated by the effects of changing light on white such as snow cloud and foam and his most characteristic works are impressionist seascapes and landscapes. He used a free and vigorous treatment in impasto while not departing from design and good draftsmanship. Lindsay wrote that Ashton had caught the changing Paris landscape "with such a fine truth and vision that you will go far in Europe today to find so able a painter"' 'Australian Dictionary of Biography'. The bookplate depicts Ashton painting on the banks of the River Seine with the Notre Dame Cathedral prominent in the background. John Lane, The Bodley Head unknown
