Reynolds Stone 1909-1979 [antikvár]

Foreword and AcknowledgementsA large retrospective exhibition of the wrork of Reynolds Stone was shown in the Dorset County Museum, Dorchester, from June to September last year. This was so well received that we were glad of the opportunity to bring the exhibition, with additional wood-engravings, watercolours, engraved stone lettering and other material, to show to a wider public in London. The chance to gather together such an exhibition to display the great variety of Reynolds Stone's genius has been generously given by Mrs Reynolds Stone and other members of her family - Mr Edward Stone, Mr and Mrs Humphrey Stone, Mr and Mrs Jonathan Gili, Mr and Mrs Ian Beck. They have constantly encouraged the enterprise and lent the vast majority of the many hundreds of exhibits. Furthermore we are delighted that Mrs Beck has been so involved with the plarming. She has also carried out research, selected the material and overseen the display, with the help of Mr Roger Peers of the Dorset County Museum. Mr Humphrey Stone has designed the poster and this publication.Generous financial help was given to the Dorchester exhibition by the Governor and the Company of the Bank of England, who have also lent the section on Bank Note design, and by the Arts Council of Great Britain. Without their support and that of the Worshipful Company of Grocers, the Folio Society, the Faculty of Royal Designers for Industry, Eton College, Magdalene College, Cambridge, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Dilettanti Society, Barclays Bank and a number of anonymous individual donors both exhibitions would have been on a much smaller and more impoverished scale.The preparation of any exhibition of Reynolds Stone's work is made the easier by that admirable book Reynolds Stone: Engravings published in 1977 by John Murray, to whom we are grateful for[9]IntroductionReynolds and Janet Stone moved to the Old Rectory, Litton Cheney, in Dorset, early in 1953. There, in Iris Murdoch's w^ords spoken at Reynolds' memorial service in 1979, 'he lived the happy good loving life of a true man, creating w^ith his wife and children a serene and beautiful home which was a refuge and a joy to his many generously welcomed friends, a place of pleasure and spiritual refreshment'. This with strange closeness echoes the words written by Eric Gill at the end of his Autobiography in 1940: 'And if I might attempt to state in one paragraph the work which I have chiefly tried to do in my Ufe it is this: to make a cell of good living in the chaos of our world'. No such statement was ever made, or ever would have been made, by Reynolds. He never made any statement of belief.The Old Rectory was indeed an extraordinary and magical-feeling place. The house itself, late Georgian, was as beautiful and elegant as houses of that period usually are, but it was not especially grand: it was its position that made it special. On one side tall beeches and elms, with an old church tower, made a picture that brought back echoes of a hundred Birket Foster wood-engravings; according to Lord Clark, Reynolds loved the splendid trees in his garden 'more than anything in the world except his family.' From the hills above the house, there were unspoiled views of Dorset countryside for twenty miles in every direction. From the side of the house, a stream ran down through woods, making rills, cascades and pools which Reynolds recaptured in many of his own engravings. He said once he would be content to paint for the rest of his life within his own garden. He and Janet had found the perfect environment for themselves and their life together. It was right for Reynolds, the perfect setting, but the extraordinary thing was that it gave the impression to visitors, immediately, that Reynolds had himself designed it; that they had stepped into a series of Reynolds Stone illustrations.