The Tyne an etching by William Walcot.
Circa 1922. Signed in pencil. The view looking down on the
open Swing Bridge,
from the High Level Bridge, Newcastle upon Tyne. Timber and
coal being carried by boat.
One of the five plates comprising The Arteries of Great Britain.
Image size is 5 1/2" x 7 1/2". Under glass, matted and framed in a walnut frame 12" x 15".
Very good condition.
William Walcot, RBA RE (1874-1943) was born at Lustdorf, near Odessa
in a mixed Scottish-Russian family. He grew up in Western Europe and South
Africa, returning to Russia at the age of 17, and studied arts and architecture
under Leon Benois at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. Later, he
attended art schools in Paris. Walcot's career as an architect in Moscow lasted
only six years, but he managed to leave a lasting heritage of refined, pure Art
Nouveau. Unlike contemporary architects like Fyodor Schechtel, Walcot never
ventured into Neo-Gothic or Russian Revival styles – his work is strictly Art
Nouveau, in its English Decadent variety (according to contemporary Russian
critics).
His largest
and best known work was the Metropol Hotel, financed by Savva Mamontov. The
spacious building, now operating as a hotel only, was conceived as a cultural
center around Private Opera hall. In 1899, Walcot applied to the open contest
with a draft codenamed A Lady's Head, earning the fourth prize
and losing to Lev Kekushev. However, Mamontov discarded the professional jury
decision, and awarded the design to Walcot (Lev Kekushev later joined the team
as project manager). More than once, Walcot's original plans were changed in the
process; in fact, there is little in common between the extant building and his
1899 draft – but the Lady's Head persisted in the main hall
ornaments. The building, completed in 1905 after a devastating fire in 1901, was
decorated by Mikhail Vrubel, Alexander Golovin, Nikolai Andreev and other
artists. Participation of Victor Vesnin and Fyodor Schechtel, suggested by
William Brumfield, has not been confirmed.
Lady's Head became Walcot's
trademark, repeated in his later works (usually in place of an arch keystone),
and frequently imitated by local craftsmen. For a while, he enjoyed an
unprecedented flow of inquiries and secured two high-profile commissions of his
own choice. These buildings, soon occupied by foreign embassies, are well
maintained and retain most of their original interiors:
1899–1900
Yakunchikova House (Prechistensky lane, 10)
1902–1903 Gutheil House
(Prechistensky lane, 8, Embassy of Morocco)
Walcot's mosaic, signed W.W.,
adorns the List House in Glazovsky Lane, built by Lev Kekushev.
Walcot's
1902 draft for the Lutheran Cathedral in Moscow won the contest, but the
cathedral was eventually built to another architect's design. Walcot published
various drafts in architectural magazines, influencing many local architects
(Brumfield, fig.58).
In 1904, Walcot lost the contest for the
Polytechnical Society Building in Myasnitskaya Street to Adolph Mincus; the
building, completed in 1905–1907 by Alexander Kuznetsov (1874–1954), bears some
details from Walcot's rejected draft.
United Kingdom
Yakunchikova House,
1899–1900. Three Lady's Heads by the entrance
In 1906, Walcot relocated
to London. There he was initially employed as a draughtsman for the South
African architect Eustace Frere. He rarely returned to practical construction,
designing only one London building: 61 St James's Street (1933). Rather, Walcot
worked as an architectural draftsman, famous for his artistic presentation of
other architects' designs and exhibiting his own work at the Royal Academy
summer exhibitions.
Walcot, along with contemporary Cyril Farey, was one
of the most sought after English architectural illustrators of the 1920s and
30s. Walcot developed his own impressionistic style in gouache and watercolour
which won numerous commissions from Edwin Lutyens, Herbert Baker and Aston Webb.
He also engaged in printmaking, creating reconstructions of ancient Greek,
Roman, Babylonian and Egyptian buildings. A folio of his work was published in
1919 as Architectural Watercolours and Etchings of William Walcot. He was
elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1913, as an associate of the
Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1916 and a Fellow of the RIBA
in 1922. He was also an associate of the British School at Rome.
Walcot's
successful practice was ruined with the outbreak of World War II, and, in 1943,
Walcot committed suicide at Hurstpierpoint, Sussex. Walcot's painting and
etchings are frequently exhibited; his painting palette is preserved at the
Royal Institute of British Architects. He had a retrospective exhibition at the
Fine Arts Society in 1974.