The Duomo Steps, Siena, 1931

Linocut, printed in colour from four blocks on buff oriental laid tissue, 29.5 x 22.5 cm (sheet), 23.2 x 18.2 cm (printed image), signed and dated in pencil lower right, numbered 6/25 and titled in pencil lower left, framed.

A charming modernist linocut by Eveline Syme of a group of people on the cathedral steps of the Duomo of Santa Maria dell’Assunta, Siena, Italy.

Eveline Syme raised in Melbourne and studied in England, later pursuing artistic interests in Paris in the early 1920s with her friend Ethel Spowers. Syme trained under André Lhote and Maurice Denis in Paris, and then Claude Flight in London, exhibiting her woodcuts, linocuts and watercolours in Australia in the 1920s and 1930s. Syme was a strong advocate for women’s education, donating the entire proceeds of her proceeds of her 1936 print retrospective to the building fund for a Women’s College at the University of Melbourne. Her work is highly regarded for her modernist approach typical of the Grosvenor School, and was the subject of a national touring exhibition alongside Ethel Spowers from 2021 – 2023.

 

Exhibited (other examples):

Water colours and Lino-cuts by E. W. Syme, Melbourne, Everyman’s Lending Library, 18 August – 1 September 1931

Exhibition of … progressive art. Sydney, Moern Art Centre, March 1932

Exhibition of Linocuts, Melbourne, Everyman’s Lending Library, 6 – 15 April, 1932

Linocuts and wood engravings by E. W. Syme (in aid of the appeal for funds to establish a University Women’s College), Melbourne, Arts and Crafts Gallery, 5 – 16 May 1936

Spowers and Syme, Canberra Museum and Art Gallery in association with the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 13 August 2021-12 February 2022, and touring (another example).

 

References:

Noordhuis-Fairfax, Sarina (ed.), Spowers and Syme, Canberra : National Gallery of Australia, 2021, pp. 77 (illustrated, another example), 93.

COPPEL, Stephen. Linocuts of the machine age : Claude Flight and the Grosvenor School. Aldershot, Hants, Eng. : Scolar Press, in association with the National Gallery of Australia, 1995. p. 181 (illustrated, another example)

 

Collections (other examples):

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, NGA 76.414

 

Provenance:

The Estate of Barbara Norris.

Private collection, Melbourne.

Private collection, Melbourne.