58th Year Anniversary

58 YEARS OF ART AND CULTURE

Celebrating 58 years of art and culture! This month marks the 58th anniversary of Uno Langmann Limited Fine Art Gallery. For nearly six decades, we’ve had the honour of sharing exceptional works of art with all of you. Here’s to many more years of passion, appreciation, and connection! 

Mr. Uno Langmann,1995 magazine article.

Sybil Andrews

SYBIL ANDREWS (British/Canadian 1898-1992)

We have had the pleasure of having received consignments of three rare Sybil Andrews linocut prints, “Fall of the Leaf”, “Logging Team” and “Ploughing Pasture”. Sybil led a fascinating life as an international artist who settled in Campbell River where she worked and taught until her death at 94. Her blue oceanfront cottage in Willow Point has been restored as a heritage site belonging to the Sybil Andrews Heritage Society, with an Artist in Residency program in place. In 2007 the City of Campbell River issued a proclamation that April 19, Sybil’s birthday, would be known as Sybil Andrews Day in recognition of her impact on the community. My father Uno Langmann knew Sybil Andrews well and helped market her work, and recently donated five of her original paintings to the Campbell River Arts Council. 

Sybil Andrews (Canadian 1898-1992) Fall of the Leaf 1934

Sybil Andrews (Canadian 1898-1992) Logging Team 1952

Sybil Andrews (Canadian 1898-1992) Ploughing Pasture 1955

Uno Langmann with Ken Blackburn at Campbell River Museum reception for donation of five paintings, April, 2024

Biography

Sybil Andrews was born in Bury St. Edmunds, United Kingdom in 1898, above the family ironmonger’s shop. One of five children, she grew up active in her local community. In 1907 Andrews met local artist Rose Mead who was chief costume designer and artist for a local pageant Andrews was involved in. Trained in London and Paris and an exhibitor at the Royal Academy, Mead encouraged artists and the young women who modelled for her to strive for independent careers. Mead became one of Andrews’ earliest mentors.

Due to lack of funds Sybil Andrews started training as a welder in 1917 to help with the war effort instead of attending art school. She eventually ended up in Bristol working on the first all-metal airplane. In her downtime she began John Hassall’s Correspondence Art Course, and her experiences with physical labour and industry would become recurring themes in her artwork.

It is said that Andrews met her second mentor and partner, Cyril Power, while he was working with another artist in Bury St Edmonds. Andrews was sketching and the two artists struck up a conversation, Powers helping with her sketch and offering her further tutoring. She was to be his companion for nearly 20 years.  

In 1922, Andrews moved to London to attend the Heatherley School of Fine Art. Upon completion of her studies, she opened a studio near King’s Cross in London. There she began taking lessons from Henri Glicensein, a sculptor who taught her the drypoint on copper method of etching. Andrews produced commercially-oriented drypoint etchings of architectural subjects, including Cambridge and Oxford Colleges, providing her with an income.

Like other Modernist artists of the time, Andrews and Power wrote an artistic manifesto railing against the Victorian style and technique, and the shapelessness of Impressionism. They pushed for Modern Art to be a reflection of current times, and that it be best depicted by modern factories and industrial buildings. 

In 1925, Iain Macnab, a former joint principal at Heatherley’s School of Fine Art, opened the Grosvenor School of Modern Art. He offered Andrews employment as secretary, and Power a position teaching. Claude Flight was employed to teach the art of linocut. These three artists coalesced to become what was defined as the Grosvenor School Style.

Flight was influenced by the pre-war Futurist and Vorticist movements, but his aim was to produce work that would appeal to the people and be affordable to produce and own. These aims, along with Flight’s techniques, began to be influenced in both Andrews’ style and subjects. Additionally, she was no longer a student of Power, but now a talented artist in her own right. Her developing style of simplification and abstraction subsequently had an impact on Power’s work. In 1929 Andrews produced her first two linocuts, Concert Hall and Theatre. In the period between 1929 and the second World War Andrews, produced approximately 47 linocuts and worked with Power to create work for advertising posters for the Underground Electic Railway Company of London and London Transport.   

In 1938 Andrews’ partnership with Power ended and she moved to Norley Wood, then on to Southampton in 1942 to help build boats for the war effort. While in Norley Wood she produced a series of oil paintings, seven of which are now in the collection of the Royal Air Force Museum. It was in Norley Wood that Andrews met and married a co-worker Walter Morgan in 1943. Morgan had always wished to go to Canada, and together they immigrated to British Columbia in 1947. After a brief period in the Okanagan, they settled in the remote logging community of Campbell River. The couple built a small blue cottage along the oceanfront at Willow Point with a studio and space for art lessons. 

Andrews adapted well to life in British Columbia and was soon gaining recognition with several exhibitions, including a show at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1948. The same year she also had a touring exhibition of 40 linocuts which traveled across Canada for two and a half years. She was elected to the Society of Canadian Painters, Etchers and Engravers in 1951 when her linocut Indian Dance was selected as the presentation print. In 1960 she began to teach weekly art classes and had several successful pupils, including Gary Ratushniak and Richard Carver. One of her major works, The Banner of St Edmund, was completed in 1975 - the embroidered banner, which she began in 1930, was inspired by her childhood fascination with St Edmund, the patron saint of her hometown. It now hangs in the Treasury of the St James Cathedral in Bury St Edmunds. 

Andrews donated a large portion of her artwork to the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, which houses over one thousand pieces of Andrews’ work including her famous colour linocuts, original linoleum blocks, oil paintings, watercolours, drawings, drypoint etchings, sketchbooks, and personal papers. A portion of her work was given to the Campbell River Museum, and in England one of the largest collections of her work in public ownership is held by St Edmundsbury Borough Council Heritage Service Bury St Edmunds, showcasing a majority of the work she produced while she was living in England. She compiled her art lessons and philosophy on art in the book The Artist’s Kitchen, which was published in 1985.

Sybil Andrews lived a long and productive life in a simple style befitting her principles. She was uninterested in money or fame but in her words: “the true value of your work, what matters, is that you have the courage and initiative to do it”. She died at age 94, continuing to teach until one month before her death. The cottage on the oceanfront in Campbell River has been restored as a heritage site belonging to the Sybil Andrews Heritage Society with an Artist in Residency program in place. In 2007 the City of Campbell River issued a proclamation that April 19, Sybil’s birthday, would be known as Sybil Andrews Day in recognition of her impact on the community. Today her paintings and prints are found in many national and international institutions including the Glenbow Museum, Calgary; the National Gallery, Ottawa; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC;  the Ashmolean, Oxford; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and many others.

Interested in other important Canadian artists? Check out the exhibition below: