by Sybil Andrews was a leading British print artist between the wars, who worked as an industrial welder, during the wars.
This article is part of a series featuring works from the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). Andrews’ ‘Sledgehammers’ is on display at the NGV Australia, click here for the full series of articles.
Linoleum is a British invention. It was discovered in 1855 by English inventor Frederick Walton: the story is that he left a can of linseed oil open overnight, and in the morning found a skin of solidified material on top.
Intrigued, Walton experimented with developing this into a useable material. In 1860 he patented this new substance, thinking it could be marketed as a waterproof covering for floors.
He called it, ‘Linoleum’ from the Latin: linum (for flax) and oleum (for oil).
Linoleum was cheap to produce, durable, and could be easily coloured or decorated with patterns. Used largely in kitchens and laundries, it was almost immediately successful; by 1864 Walton was mass producing it, within 5 years he had expanded to America.
‘Lino’ would remain a popular floor covering for the next hundred years.
The traits that made Lino good for covering floors, also meant it was useful for other things.
In the 1890s, Austrian book publishers began using it to create simple stencil-and-paint artworks, that they used for textbook covers. This was an imitation of wood block prints that were popular in Europe at the time: lino was cheaper than wood, and easier to shape.
Linocuts, as these were called, soon spread to neighbouring Germany. German Expressionist artist Erich Heckel was the first well-known figure, to deploy the technique in their work.
Linocuts would spread throughout Europe, and establish themselves as an artistic style, if a niche one. In England, they would come to highest prominence between the two World Wars.
One of the leading practitioners was Sybil Andrews.
Andrews was born in April 1898, in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. Her parents helped run a hardware store and ironmongery; from a young age, she would be exposed to the hands-on use of tools and machinery.
One of five children, Andrews was schooled locally. She showed a talent for painting and drawing, and set her sights on an artistic career.
But her parents were unable to afford to send her to art school. Instead, she developed her skills via a correspondence course, and was mentored by painter Rose Mead, a friend of the family.
Andrews turned 18 in 1916, at the height of World War I. The number of people required in the armed services had caused serious labour shortages, Andrews would be one of many woman who took a job, usually reserved for men.
Familiar with metalwork from her upbringing, she became an apprentice welder.
Andrews initially worked at the Standard Motor Company in Coventry, then moved to the Bristol Welding Company, as a torch welder. Both factories made airplane parts, the latter helping construct the first all metal plane made in England.
She continued as a welder through to the end of the war.
After the war, Andrews returned to her artistic pursuits. With money saved from her employment, in 1922 she moved to London and enrolled in the Heatherley School of Fine Art.
There she continued to develop her drawing skills, and was exposed to etching and printing for the first time.
Among the students was Cyril Power, an architect who Andrews knew from Bury St Edmunds. Twenty five years her senior, Power had already had a successful career as a practicing architect, then university lecturer.
But after seeing active duty in the war, Power had decided to chase his passions. An enthusiastic amateur painter, he enrolled in art school in his fifites to develop his skills, leaving his wife and four children back in Suffolk.
Power and Andrews would become close friends, then artistic collaborators. They shared a studio while studying, both graduating in 1924.
In 1925, both Power and Andrews went to work at a new private school in London, the Grosvenor School of Modern Art. Founded by Scottish engraver Iain Macnab, it was run out of his house in Pimlico.
Power was one of the school’s first lecturers, and Andrews its first secretary.
She took classes at the school as well, among her teachers was Claude Flight. Flight was a printmaker who had enthusiastically taken to linocuts, believing them ideal for the ‘machine age’ of the 1920s.
Andrews quickly fell in love with the medium.
In 1926, Andrews began producing her own colour linocuts. With limited funds, her technique was simple: she used cheap, household linoleum that she cut into stencils, using metal ribs taken from an old umbrella.
Paint was applied with a spoon, or single roller. The rudimentary approach was part of the appeal: new stencils could be created quickly and cheaply, leaving her to focus on the designs.
Lino is thinner than other stencil materials, which prevents fine detail in the prints. Flight’s approach, adopted by Andrews, was to instead create larger colour blocks using a limited palette – usually three to five colours – which lead to bold, striking designs.
Andrews would sometimes add detail by ‘hatching’, manually adding finer elements once the print was made.
Determined and a hard worker, Andrews worked diligently to improve her craft.
Art, Andrews insisted, is creative, never imitative or superficial. It requires focus, hard work, and conscious engagement.
‘Sybil Andrews and the Grosvenor School’, Hana Leaper
Her work quickly developed, and she began exhibiting her prints around 1928. They were also included in showcases of art from the Grosvenor School, that Flight would tour.
The school’s reputation was growing, and it was seen as one of London’s foremost modern art institutions. By the 1930s, the term ‘Grosvenor School’ would become a style in its own right.
In 1931, Power and Andrews moved to Hammersmith, where they shared a combined home and studio overlooking the Thames. This would be a fertile period in their careers, as each encouraged the other, and they produced some of their best work.
Jointly, they worked on a series of posters commissioned by promoter Frank Pick. These had diverse subjects, covering sporting events, a bus hire company, and the Aldershot Military Tattoo.
Individually, they worked on their own projects. The overlapping nature of their lives can be seen in Power’s ‘The Eight’, and Andrews’ ‘Bringing in the Boat’, both inspired by rowers they could see on the Thames, from their window.
‘Sledgehammers’, held by the NGV, comes from this period.
The print is a small, colour linocut, measuring 26 x 31 centimetres. The subject is half a dozen metalworkers, depicted in red, viridian, and Chinese blue, on buff Oriental paper.
The work was inspired by Andrews’ experiences, working during the war. On one occasion she was sent to the blacksmiths’ shop, there she saw a group of burly men, shirtless and tattooed, pounding away at a large forge with hammers.
The scene made a dramatic impression on the artist:
The curve of the movement, the curve of the machine, the curve of their arms… it’s the action I am always looking for. It was tremendously exciting and frightening.
Sybil Andrews, ‘Sybil & Cyril: Cutting Through Time’
To recreate this dynamic scene, Andrews elongated the worker’s arms and torsos, and placed them such that they form a loose circle. Stylised curves of colour accompany the hammers they are swinging, adding to the sense of movement.
It is like a whirlpool of fierce, concentrated energy.
There is also an element of nostalgia. By 1933, when ‘Sledgehammers’ was created, machines were rapidly replacing the manual labour the print depicted.
While only 15 years had passed since Andrews saw the workers in action, they were already part of the past.
Satisfied with the print, Andrews created a limited run of 60, each of which she signed and numbered. Many are now in public galleries, around the world.
Visiting the NGV recently, wandering the permanent collection, it instantly caught my eye. From across the room, a bright rectangle of red, symbolising the heat of the foundry, now drawing my attention to it.
An exciting, stylish print, still energising after all these decades.
Andrews and Power continued their collaboration through the 1930s. They exhibited their works together, often under the joint moniker, ‘Andrew Power’.
Then in 1938, the artistic relationship came to an end. Power returned to his wife in Suffolk, Andrews moved to a small thatched cottage in Hampshire, owned by Power, called ‘Pipers’.
The status of their relationship, and why it ended, has remained of fascination for art buffs.
Many friends and other members of the artistic community assumed Andrews and Power were lovers. For more than 15 years they lived and worked together, changing houses and jobs several times, and it was thought Power had left his wife for the younger woman.
Andrews always denied this. In one of her last interviews, in the 1980s, she ‘absolutely and utterly’ rejected that they were intimate, insisting they were only ever good friends.
Their sudden separation in 1938 does feel like a breakup, with Power returning to make good with his family.
But many sources note they had been drifting apart. Towards the end, they had worked together less often, and Andrews had begun spending more time in the countryside.
Finally, the looming spectre of war may have caused Power to want to return to his family. What really occurred, will probably never be known.
After the split, Power never again made linocuts, although he continued to paint. He died in 1951.
At the outbreak of World War II, Andrews returned to welding.
This time she took a job at the British Power Company, and worked on the construction of warships. She continued to make art in her spare time, including seven prints of navy vessels, that are now held by the Royal Airforce Museum.
She also met fellow worker Walter Morgan, who she married in 1943.
Depressed by the violence of the conflict, after the war the couple decided they wanted a change of lifestyle. In 1947, they moved to Vancouver Island off the west coast of Canada, settling in the remote logging town of Campbell River.
They built a small cottage, and made ends meet repairing boats. Linocuts were out of fashion by this time, and while Andrews continued to practice art, she drifted into obscurity.
The Grosvenor School was rediscovered in the 1970s and 80s. Exhibitions were held at the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Stephen Coppel wrote a well-received book called, ‘Linocuts of the Machine Age’.
Andrews’s contribution to modern art was recognised, and she became something of a minor celebrity again. She remained in Campbell River for the rest of her life, teaching and making art, and occasionally appearing at exhibitions of her work.
Sybil Andrews died in December 1992, aged 94.
