An Etched Copper Printing Plate illustrating ”Underpaying the Pipe“.

An Etched Copper Printing Plate illustrating "Underpaying the Pipe", signed by Edmund J. Sullivan.

[203 x 151 mm]. 1925.

The plate is signed "Sullivan" and dated "[19]25". There is an impression in the British Museum (illustrated in the on-line catalogue) with Sullivan's pencil signature and title "Underpaying the Pipe".

Edmund J. Sullivan (1869-1933) was the subject of a full chapter in Gordon N. Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England from 1790-1914, pp.186-193. Ray concluded:

"Sullivan's career as an illustrator was one of the most substantial and distinguished in the annals of English art. He was influential through his teaching at Goldsmith's College of Art, his knowledgeable and authoritative books on Line of 1921 and The Art of Illustration of 1922, and above all through the example of his own work. No doubt he was a belated Victorian, living beyond his due time, who continued to believe in the free yet faithful interpretation of his chosen author, in telling a story and rendering character, and in seeking to arouse in the reader the emotional response that he himself had felt to the text before him. But even for those whose view of illustration is poles apart from Sullivan's, he is saved by his draftsmanship and sense of design. James Thorpe called him "the greatest illustrator in line that this country has produced", and Percy Muir, though he could not quite endorse this claim, puts him with Bewick, Cruikshank, Keene, and Beardsley".

Stock no. ebc4167