The term 'woodblock print' was frequently used during the period when Margaret Preston began experimenting in relief printing. It described woodblocks cut along the grain (often printed in the Japanese manner), as well as those cut on the engrain blocks. Preston usually used this term to describe her relief prints.
Although Preston produced more prints using the woodblock process than by any other printmaking technique, it is ironic that we have no firm evidence of when or where she made her first experiments in the process.
Her husband, Bill Preston, claimed that she had made many woodcuts while in Munich in 1903; in his book "The Story of Australian Art," William Moore stated that she exhibited color woodcuts in 1913; and Preston claimed in 1919 that she had previously exhibited examples at the New English Art Club and the Royal Society of Women Artists, although there are no prints recorded in relevant catalogues. The artist certainly taught the craft of woodblock printing to shell-shocked soldiers at Seale-Hayne Repatriation Hospital, Devon, in 1918 and examples were used to illustrate a magazine (at present unlocated) by the soldiers. The only evidence that Preston produced woodblock prints before her return to Australia in 1919 is recorded in the catalogue exhibition held at Preece's Gallery, Adelaide, in September 1919. Of the four prints listed, only one has been located - Still Life and Flowers (c. 1916-1919 cat. no. 8) has been sighted in a dealer's photograph. Given the paucity of the information, it is perphas best to outline the influences that may have led Preston to produce woodblock prints.
Preston grew up in an area when wood engraving was the most prominate form of book, journal and newspaper illustration. Her constant exposure to of illustration may have preposed her to the medium in later years. At about the same time as the twelve year old Preston was deciding to become an artist, as most ambitious publishing project was being undertaken, namely, The Picturesque Atlas of Australia which made use of over 700 wood-engraved illustrations and employed many of the most gifted young Australian artist, including Tom Roberts (1856-1931), AH Fullwood (1863-1930), Julian Ashton (1851 – 1942) and WC Piguenit (1836 - 1914) to produce these illustrations.
The American engraver, Horace Baker, who supervised the project encouraged a new sense of professionalism in the trade and reproductive wood engravings began to appear in art exhibitions alongside artists' etchings and black and white work.
When Bill Preston was interviewed late in his life he stated that his wife had produced many woodcuts in Europe, particularly in Munich during her first trip. Althogh Preston attended an illustration school in Munich that taught woodblock printing, she was more interested in the new processes of drawing for photographic reproduction. Of the artist's teachers in those years, only one - Paul-Emile Colin (1877-1949) - produce woodblock prints.
Nevertheless, Preston would have seen many European exhibitions that included woodblock prints.
Had Margaret Preston produced prints in Europe, she would have surely have exhibited examples in her 1907 Adelaide exhibition, which included poster and process work, or in 'The First Australian Exhibition of Women's Work,' in Melbourne in the same year. Violet Teague (1872-1951), who had been a fellow student at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, certainly exhibited woodblock prints in the Melbourne exhibition. Between 1906 and 1912, while Preston was living in Adelaide, she apparently had no interest in the technique.
William Moore records that Preston first exhibited woodcuts in 1913 at the Women's Art Society in London and a newspaper article of 1923 states she had been making prints since 1914. Considering that her interest in the technique probably developed as a result of the artists she met and the exhibitions she saw between 1912 and 1913, the year 1914 - by which time she had settled in England - seems more realistic.
On her second trip to Paris, in 1912, the Union Centrale de Arts Décoratifs presented a series of exhibitions at the Pavillion de Marsan, which seems to have directed Preston's thoughts towards the possibility of prntmaking. Included were a general exhibition of Japanese prints, an exhibition of the poster art of Jules Chéret and the inaugural showing of the Société de la Gravure sur Bois Originale (which inluded contemporary woodcuts from both England and France). It was undoubtedly at this time that Preston also studied Japanese prints at the Musée Guimet.
The color woodblock print (printed in the Japanese method).
Courtesy of National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (cat. no. 7).
English-speaking art student in Paris tended to maintain close and supportive friendships with each other. Preston probably knew of the group of American women who congregated at Mrs. Whitelaw Reid's Club for American Girls at 4 rue de Chevreusel A member of the group, Etheo Mars (1876-1956) had learnt the basic technique of the color woodblock print from Arthus Wesley Dow (1857-1922) before she arrived in Paris in 1906. Mars exhibited regularly at the Salon d'Automne and served on the jury for the graphic section. Her exhibition of decorative color woodblock prints at Mrs Whitelaw Reid's in 1913 attracted other women to the technique. Mars' students included Ada Gilmore (1833-1955), Mildred McMillen (1884-1940) and Margaret Patterson (1867-1950). Also in Paris at that time was Edna Boies (1872-1937), who had become familiar with the technique in Japan in 1902. All of these women were later associated with the "Provincetown Printers.' One of the technical characteristics of this group was printing in colors from one block, a process Preston was to later explore.
It was probably through these American women that Preston became aware of the writing of Dow, whose influential book, 'Composition,' was avalable in both English and French editions. Dow was a leading teacher and exponent of the American Arts and Crafts movement. His book championed the importance of structure as the basis for composition, and emphasized the significance of Japanese art. At his schools he taught his students the rudiments ts of pottery, batik, weaving and woodblock printing, and he discussed aspects of these subjects in his book. preston acquired most of the books that Dow recommended on Japanese and Chinese art.
Reference:
[1] R. Butler, The Prints of Margaret Preston, A catalogue raisonné, National Gallery of Australia (2005).
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