Skip to navigation | Skip to search
No photo credits available.
No photo credits available.
No photo credits available.
The work of painter-printmaker Sydney Lee is currently on display in the Royal Academy's exhibition From the Shadows: The Prints of Sydney Lee RA.
Lee was a highly accomplished and experimental printmaker, as curator Robert Meyrick demonstrates in these videos. His search for subjects took him from the waterways of Kent to the mountains of Switzerland, while his influences ranged from Whistler's etchings of the Thames to Japanese colour woodblock prints.
The exhibition runs until 26 May 2013.
RA Magazine's blog is compiled by members of the editorial team plus invited guest bloggers from the Royal Academy and beyond. Get in touch here.
All comments on this post - (4 comment)
Thank you very much for posting these videos. I am familiar with the work of some of Lee's contemporaries, but not with that of Lee himself. Robert Meyrick's brief talks, and the examples shown, encourage us (as is perhaps the intention) to make the effort to see this exhibition
Posted on: April 27, 2013 10:55 AM by Malcolm Hay
WOW! Sydney Lee's exciting colour wood block prints, based on the Japanese techniques, uniquely depict beautiful St. Ives and other British scenes. It's long past time to discover and celebrate the genius of this masterful artist. Thank you RA for organising this exhibit!
Posted on: April 26, 2013 10:22 PM by Carol Humphreys
I too like these very much. They have something of the pictorial values that I have seen in the watercolours of George Horton, the Tyneside artist whose dates are similar to Lee's. To achieve these results from engraved boxwood is astonishing. The Staithes image so like the Japanese that Van Gogh was also influenced by is very satisfying. I know Staithes quite well. Clearly not as well as he did. What a far cry these quiet technical miracles with their reclusive poetry are from the blether of Ego Ego Ego that claims to be the centre ground today. Long live Sydney, long perish all gobby egos.
Posted on: April 26, 2013 8:15 PM by John Devereux
This is an excellent exhibition - an eye opener in terms of the quality of Lee's print work. It was especially interesting for me since I've owned a large Sydney Lee oil painting (Welsh Cottages) for many years and knew very little about him.
Posted on: April 26, 2013 5:19 PM by Dave Davies