Old Bridge, Hankow

Artist Sir Frank William Brangwyn (1867 - 1956)

Date1924

MediumEtching and drypoint on paper

Dimensions19.1 x 16.5 cm

ClassificationsPrint

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Donated by W. Coomber, 1929. © The Estate of Frank William Brangwyn.

Object number644

DescriptionThis is an intaglio print (etching and drypoint) on paper. A group of oxen, carts and people walk beneath a bridge. On top of the bridge are wooden dwellings adhering to its main columns. The dwellings overhang and are held in place by diagonal wooden beams. These houses have an organic feel to their construction.

A Welsh painter, etcher and designer of furniture. Born in Bruges, Belgium, on 13 May 1867. His father was a church architect. When he was eight, Brangwyn and his family moved to London. From 1882, he spent two years working in William Morris’s workshop; his childhood experience of his father’s workshop for ecclesiastical furnishings in Bruges may well have appealed to Morris’s artistic doctrine. Subsequent to this enlightened training, Brangwyn travelled to Paris where he became an active champion of the blossoming Art Nouveau movement. He experimented introducing the sinuous lines characteristic of Art Nouveau into his paintings of galleons and shipping scenes. He specialised in painting large mural cycles, such as those for the Royal Exchange (1906), for Skinners Hall (1909) and even for the Empress of Britain (a Royal Mail liner), which later sank, taking Brangwyn’s murals with her. In 1919 he was elected a Royal Academician, having exhibited regularly there since 1885. Knighted in 1941, he died in Ditchling, Sussex, on 11 June 1956, having bequeathed most of his works to the City of Bruges, where they remain on display in a museum bearing his name.

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