(Flowering tree in front of gate)

Ada Shrimpton Giles

Ada Shrimptom Giles creates a watercolor effect within the rigid confines of the metal relief technique, in which the areas of the plate she does not want printed are cut away, like a blockprint. This effect is partially achieved through the lack of key-block outlines and an overlapping of inks that mimics the graduated pigment catchment of watercolor on paper. Shrimpton left large areas of unprinted surfaces in which the paper color dominated. She would sometimes use up to five plates to accomplish this illusion.

Ada Shrimpton married British printmaker William Giles. She exhibited paintings and prints at the Royal Society of British Artists and Royal Academy from 1889 to 1924, and the Society of Graver Printers in Colour from 1913 to 1925. The Giles's interest in the metal relief print did not deter them from their study of the woodcut, nor from experimenting with new techniques. In some of their most well known works the artists combined both color methods; woodcut, and metal relief.

Ada and William Giles were founders of "The Original Colour Print Magazine"in the early 1920s. The magazine featured articles by various printmakers working with color relief methods. The magazine ended in June of 1926, after Ada's death. Her husband, editor William Giles wrote in the final edition where her print "Almond Blossom in the Apennines" was reprinted from the plates:

"...Her co-operation was so constant and so valuable that without it the editor finds it difficult to continue it as an annual. The majority of the proofs of her edition were printed in volatile oil colour, which both of us eventually abandoned. It is extremely difficult to distinguish between those printed in oil and those in watercolour without passing a wash of water across them.

The change was adopted to avoid any trace of ultimate oxidation in the print itself and also to avoid the chemical degrading of certain pigments which the oil set up in contact with the zinc."

Born Ada Mathilda Shrimpton in England in 1858, she exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy and with the Society of Women Artists beginning in 1889. In 1907 she met and married reknowned artist William Giles, a fellow British artist who was 21 years her junior and who inspired her to try printmaking. Giles had been experimenting with the Japanese method of color woodcut since 1901. Together the artists experimented with color printing techniques, essentially applying woodcut theory to metal plates and printing them relief. (Elizabeth Harvey-Lee notes in her catalog, "Mistresses of the Graphic Arts," that 'Ada's first print in this technique, "Almond Blossoms in the Apennines," 1911, predates her more well-known husband's own first attempt.')

The couple, who had married at the British Consulate in Venice, traveled frequently and captured their surroundings as they went. Eventually, with Ada's financial backing, William founded "Colour Print Magazine" (1924 - 1926). In the June 1st, 1925 edition William Giles made the following announcement on page 42: "It is with deep regret the the Editor has to announce the death of his colleague and wife - Ada Matilda Shrimpton Giles, to whom the inception of this Magazine was largely due and whose last act was the granting of means by which the Original Colour Print should receive perpetual encouragement."

Extracts from her will, printed in the June 1, 1926 edition, pages 127-128 indicate she left a sum of 3000 pounds to the British Museum and the V & A to set up an "A.M. Shrimpton and William Giles Bequest" to benefit colour printmaking.

Ada Shrimpton Giles also exhibited with Society of Graver Printers from 1913 to 1925, the year she died. Her work remains quite scarce.