(original linoleum block)
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NOTE: The figure cut into this linoleum block seems related to the figure of the mother in the tempera painting, ‘Mother-Love in Water’ (see previous entry). The bent posture, the legs shown to the calves, the shape and position of the left arm (bent and reaching, with a heftier forearm than from shoulder to elbow), as well as the shape and bend of the head, with the face in profile, as well as other similar details, leaves little doubt these compositions are related. This linoleum block was used to produce a print - a copy of which is in the National Art Library in the Victoria and Albert Museum - of a white line figure printed in red, in an edition of seven in 1947, and titled ‘Nude’ with the notation that it is a ‘continuous line - from drawing’. While the present example is not all one line, it was certainly drawn in a ‘continuous line’ manner. The date coincides with that for ‘Mother-Love in Water’. Not only this, but the following print, ‘Siren’, also from 1947, is the exact same plate size as the present plate, unlike the size of any other Cox prints seen so far, which seems to indicate these plates were from the same batch of linoleum blocks used at this time. Since the majority of prints by Cox in the late 1940s were elimination linocuts (in which the block was cut down further and further during the printing process), there cannot be many blocks that survive from this period. Beyond this, the method of developing spontaneous effects in ‘intaglio line’ look ahead to the activity of ‘blind drawing’ from 1968 onward. |
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