Gerald Spencer Pryse (1882–1956) was a British artist and lithographer.
Gerald Spencer Pryse (1882–1956) was a British artist and lithographer.
Born at Ashton, Pryse studied in London and Paris, and first won a prize at the Venice International Exhibition in 1907. In the same year, he joined the Fabian Society, and helped to found The Neolith, a periodical of literature and the fine arts; the journal was printed in lithography. He was a regular exhibitor at the Senefelder Club, [1] and contributed works to Punch, the Strand Magazine, and The Graphic.
During the Great War, Pryse produced a considerable body of lithographic work, some of it in colour under the title Autumn Campaign (1914). This was based in his time in France and Belgium at the beginning of the war when he drove around in a Mercedes carrying lithographic stones in the back. He served as a dispatch rider for the Belgian government and was present at the Siege of Antwerp. The artist wrote a memoir of this time entitled Four Days: an account of a journey in France made between 28 and 31 August 1914, published by John Lane in 1932. Pryse also saw some of the Battle of the Marne and the Aisne but was back in Belgium to record the fall of Ostend and the subsequent retirement along the River Yser. Pryse also worked with the Indian Army in France and several of his lithographs depict scenes of Indian troops.
Later, he served as a captain in the Queen Victoria's Rifles, King's Royal Rifle Corps, and was mentioned in dispatches. [2] His main action was in the Third Battle of Ypres where he won the Military Cross, the 1914 Star, the Order of the Crown of Belgium, the Croix de Guerre.
By the end of 1916, Pryse had made an application to become a war artist, and towards the end of the war, was granted permission to sketch at the front and he was able to record the conditions of trench warfare in numerous water-colour drawings, but many of these were lost in the German offensive of 1918. [3] The remaining drawings were exhibited later in London and were described as having "a freshness and authenticity that were not always apparent in the works of the official war artists." [4] Unfortunately, many of these were destroyed by enemy action during the Second World War. He left the regiment at the end of the war but rejoined it in 1921 when the battalion was stationed at Wormwood Scrubs for three months during a coal strike. [5]
During the war, he also designed a number of posters including several published by Frank Pick for the Underground Electric Railways Company of London in London, as well as for the Labour Party, The British Red Cross, and for the Empire Marketing Board. One of his most famous posters, entitled The Only Road for an Englishman, shows a regiment of British soldiers marching through a ruined town. [6] Pryse was one of the illustrators selected by Percy Bradshaw for inclusion in his The Art of the Illustrator (1917–1918). [note 1]
He worked in Hammersmith from 1914 to 1925, but in 1925 travelled to Morocco and observed some of the fighting there against the French. [9] He returned to the country and lived there for some years after 1950. Pryse was commissioned in 1924 to create a series of lithographs for the British Empire Exhibition illustrating the extent and variety of life within the British Empire. His work was part of the art competitions at the 1928 Summer Olympics and the 1932 Summer Olympics. [10] In 1932 he married Muriel Anstace Theodora, daughter of the Rev. Laurence Farrall, and they had three daughters, one of whom, Tessa Spencer Pryse, later a landscape artist, became an art student against her father's wishes. He died at Cranford House, Stourton, Worcestershire on 28 November 1956 aged 74.
The siege of Antwerp was an engagement between the German and the Belgian, British and French armies around the fortified city of Antwerp during World War I. German troops besieged a garrison of Belgian fortress troops, the Belgian field army and the British Royal Naval Division in the Antwerp area, after the German invasion of Belgium in August 1914. The city, which was ringed by forts known as the National Redoubt, was besieged to the south and east by German forces.
The First Battle of Ypres was a battle of the First World War, fought on the Western Front around Ypres, in West Flanders, Belgium. The battle was part of the First Battle of Flanders, in which German, French, Belgian armies and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) fought from Arras in France to Nieuwpoort (Nieuport) on the Belgian coast, from 10 October to mid-November. The battles at Ypres began at the end of the Race to the Sea, reciprocal attempts by the German and Franco-British armies to advance past the northern flank of their opponents. North of Ypres, the fighting continued in the Battle of the Yser (16–31 October), between the German 4th Army, the Belgian army and French marines.
The Battle of the Yser was a battle of the First World War that took place in October 1914 between the towns of Nieuwpoort and Diksmuide, along a 35 km (22 mi) stretch of the Yser River and the Yperlee Canal, in Belgium. The front line was held by a large Belgian force, which halted the German advance in a costly defensive battle.
Walter Hood Fitch was a botanical illustrator, born in Glasgow, Scotland, who executed some 10,000 drawings for various publications. His work in colour lithograph, including 2700 illustrations for Curtis's Botanical Magazine, produced up to 200 plates per year.
John Northcote Nash was a British painter of landscapes and still-lives, and a wood engraver and illustrator, particularly of botanic works. He was the younger brother of the artist Paul Nash.
Frits Van den Berghe was a Belgian expressionist and surrealist painter and illustrator.
Edmund Blampied was one of the most eminent artists to come from the Channel Islands, yet he received no formal training in art until he was 15 years old. He was noted mostly for his etchings and drypoints published at the height of the print boom in the 1920s during the etching revival, but was also a lithographer, caricaturist, cartoonist, book illustrator and artist in oils, watercolours, silhouettes and bronze.
Gilbert Declercq is a Belgian freelance painter, illustrator, and comics artist.
Barnett Freedman CBE RDI was a British painter, commercial designer, book illustrator, typographer, and lithographer.
Sir William Russell Flint was a Scottish artist and illustrator who was known especially for his watercolours of women. He also worked in oils, tempera, and printmaking.
The Senefelder Club is an organization formed in London in 1909 to promote the craft of art reproduction by the process of lithography.
Jules Schmalzigaug was a Belgian futurist painter.
Henry Martens was an English military illustrator and artist. He worked mainly in water-color although a few oil paintings do exist. He was the eldest of three sons of Christoph Heinrich Martens and his wife Rebecca, the others being John William and Conrad.
Alfred Théodore Joseph Bastien was a Belgian artist, academic, and soldier.
Ethel Léontine Gabain, later Ethel Copley, was a French-Scottish artist. Gabain was a renowned painter and lithographer and among the founding members of the Senefelder Club. While she was known for her oil portraits of actresses, Gabain was one of the few artists of her time able to live on the sale of her lithographs. She also did etchings, dry-points, as well as some posters.
William Matthew Hart (1830-1908) was an Irish-born English bird illustrator and lithographer who worked for John Gould.
Pryse may refer to:
The German invasion of Belgium was a military campaign which began on 4 August 1914. On 24 July, the Belgian government had announced that if war came it would uphold its neutrality. The Belgian government mobilised its armed forces on 31 July and a state of heightened alert was proclaimed in Germany. On 2 August, the German government sent an ultimatum to Belgium, demanding passage through the country and German forces invaded Luxembourg. Two days later, the Belgian government refused the German demands and the British government guaranteed military support to Belgium. The German government declared war on Belgium on 4 August; German troops crossed the border and began the Battle of Liège.
Archibald Standish Hartrick was a Scottish painter known for the quality of his lithographic work. His works covered urban scenes, landscapes and figure painting and he was a founder member of the Senefelder Club.
Percy Venner Bradshaw, who often signed PVB, was a British illustrator who also created the Press Art School, a correspondence course for drawing.
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