Joseph Simpson.
[n.d., c.1930.]
Coloured lithograph, 340 x 250mm, 13½ x 17¼".
Hugh Cecil Lowther, 5th Earl of Lonsdale [1857 - 1944], sportsman. Numbered 7/100 and signed in pencil by Joseph Simpson (1879 - 1939), painter and etcher of portraits and sporting subjects. Simpson was born in Carlisle and studied art at Glasgow School of Art. He became a close friend of D.Y. Cameron and was elected RBA in 1909. Simpson designed covers for Edinburgh publishers and was a prolific designer of bookplates. In 1918 he became an official war artist for the RAF and was stationed in France. Simpson was already forty-five when he took up etching in 1925, at the height of the boom period for the medium. His first twenty or so plates were etched with a gramophone needle and printed by the artist himself on the small press lent to him by a local Carlisle printing firm. His first exhibition of etchings took place in Glasgow at Wishart Brown in March 1926. His friend Frank Brangwyn wrote the catalogue introduction. A second highly successful show was staged in November 1926 by Alex, Reid and Lefevre in London. Simpson exhibited in Munich, Venice, Florence & Stockholm.
[Ref: 11243]  £260.00