Daphne Reynolds, (1918-2002), painter & engraver
Michael Rhodes
Daphne Dent, painter and engraver, born Huddersfield, Yorkshire, 12
January, 1918; married 1943, Graham Reynolds; died Bradfield St
George, Suffolk, 12 December, 2002.
Circumstances prevented Daphne Reynolds from making a serious early
start on her artistic career, yet eventually she broke through to win
the esteem of her peers. As a painter she had a fine sense of colour
and tonal gradations, worked with assurance in various media and
enthusiastically met the challenge of new subjects at home and abroad.
Reynolds was middle-aged before she became a printmaker, but was to
exhibit widely and gain admission to major collections. In particular,
she contributed to the revival of that subtle print form the
mezzotint, striving to emulate the best work by past and present
practitioners.
She was born in Huddersfield in 1918, the daughter of Thomas Dent, a
photographer, and his wife Florence (Haskett). As a young man, Dent
became so enthused by photography that he ran away to London,
abandoning lace design studies at Nottingham Polytechnic. By the time
that Daphne was studying at Huddersfield College of Art, the
Depression was undermining the now ageing Thomas's
portrait-photography business, pushing him to the edge of bankruptcy.
Daphne joined him, becoming a member of the Professional
Photographers' Association. She enjoyed the work, but remained a
thwarted painter.
The constant stream of photographic subjects and the peculiar
surroundings of Burlington House in Huddersfield, where they lived and
worked, nourished her visual awareness. Built in the 1870s by John
Edward Shaw, it had a fine studio, many attics and cellars, a statue
brandishing a lamp on a wall and a grotto with a waterfall and two
pools. Adding to its eeriness and oddness was the suspicion at night
that a violin was being played, if not by her father perhaps by the
ghost of Shaw's son, who had committed suicide there.
In 1951, Daphne transferred from Huddersfield to London with wartime
Civil Defence. Its regional headquarters was the Geological Museum,
where she met the young art historian Graham Reynolds, marrying him in
1943. Reynolds became Keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings,
and of Paintings, at the Victoria & Albert Museum (1959-74), and a
prolific author. Among his landmark books would be studies of
Victorian painters, of Turner and Constable and of portrait miniatures
in the Wallace Collection, the Metropolitan Museum and those owned by
the Queen.
By the 1950s, Daphne Reynolds was able to paint seriously again,
contributing to mixed exhibitions in London and Paris. To make up for
lost time she worked regularly and hard, totally engaged. Years later
she overheard mention of an artist who lamented the lack of time to
paint. Her blunt Yorkshire reaction was: "Well, if he wants to paint
he will bloody well do it!" For her, painting was the priority.
Her watercolours of the 1950s depicted subjects that remained familiar
in her work: landscapes and studies of plants and animals. Outlined in
Indian ink, they were in a style short-lived for her: rather
Neo-Romantic, reminiscent of painters such as Graham Sutherland, John
Minton and Keith Vaughan. Like many other British artists, in the late
1950s Reynolds felt the impact of American Abstract Expressionism. In
the picture Treasury of Atreus, the tomb at Mycenae partly dissolves
into abstract sweeps of colour. However, what she saw around her
remained a key element in her work.
In 1968, when her husband was a visiting professor at Yale, she grew
bored with Connecticut, hired a car and wandered off through America.
There was an extended visit to Arizona and New Mexico, including a
stay with the Hopi Indians. Her love of desert scenery was fostered.
For the next few years, nourished by many sketches which she had done
on the spot, she produced a series of small, powerful Indian ink and
gouache pictures in strong colours, her reaction to the arid
landscapes and fierce sunsets of southern America.
When in 1973 Graham Reynolds had to go to New Zealand and Australia to
oversee a touring exhibition, Daphne accompanied him and took a
journey into the outback. The landscape around Alice Springs, Ayers
Rock and Mount Olga "really stirred her up", he recalls, as did visits
to Thailand and especially Iran, where she produced lovely Isfahan
desert scenes.
By this time, Daphne Reynolds was embarked on a new career as a
printmaker, having studied with Anthony Gross at the Slade School of
Fine Art. She admired Gross both as an engraver and painter,
collecting his works. Paintings by J.M.W. Turner, Caspar David
Friedrich and Atkinson Grimshaw, the abstract black-and-white
photographs of Bill Brandt and the large mezzotints of the Japanese
artist Hamaguchi give an idea of the catholicity of her enthusiasms.
Gross had encouraged Reynolds herself to make mezzotints. They present
a particular technical challenge to the printmaker. In the 19th
century, the mezzotint technique's rich, velvety, luminous shadows
made it especially suitable for reproducing oil paintings for wide
distribution, but into the 20th century the vogue for mezzotints
disappeared. Reynolds was included in Colnaghi's important exhibition
"The Mezzotint Rediscovered" in 1974 and became noted for her essays
in this medium. She featured in "80 Prints by Modern Masters", at
Angela Flowers Gallery (1982); contributed to the publication A
Tribute to Birgit Skiöld (1983); and at the Royal Society of
Painter-Etchers and Engravers (1985-86) won the Barcham Green Award.
A trip by the Reynoldses to Japan in the 1980s enhanced Daphne's
interest in the medium. Shinto shrines and Mount Fuji were new
subjects to tackle for her tiny black-and-white mezzotints. Otherwise,
commonly the object treated is something found around the house, such
as a flat-iron, candles, icing cones and tape measures – all given her
meticulous and visionary treatment.
Reynolds was a frequent contributor to the "Small is Beautiful" series
of exhibitions at Flowers East gallery. Her hand-coloured mezzotint
End of the Voyage is in the current show. She was a fellow of the
Printmakers' Council, a founder member of Gainsborough's House Print
Workshop in Sudbury (its first chairman) and chairman for several
years of the Women's International Art Club.
She had over two dozen solo shows, her 80th birthday exhibition at
Chappel Galleries, near Colchester, in 1998 showing an enormous
variety of work over five decades. She was pleased when a few years
ago Robert Howard, one of the editors of the 1999 volume Late Onset
Schizophrenia, asked to reproduce one of her paintings on its cover.
It was one held by the Government Art Collection that had been chosen
by Harold Wilson, when Prime Minister, to hang in his study in 10
Downing Street.
"In the foreground is a rather sinister figure looking at three other
sinister black figures in the middle distance," says Graham Reynolds:
She called it The Watcher, but for Wilson it became The Watchers. The
book says that he was undoubtedly a clinical case, obsessed with the
clandestine activities of the security services, believing that his
light socket was bugged, and so on.