In Derbyshire, Near Matlock

John Edgar Platt

Platt noted about his printing techniques: "Gradations of colour over wide areas are readily produced and have a directness and spontaneity unique to this medium. Enveloping effects of light and atmosphere can be beautifully suggested by these gradations, and the relief of one plane from another the clean-cut character of the flat colour masses leads to a definiteness of form; the gradations provide a gracious element."

In John Edgar Platt’s “Derbyshire, Near Matlock,” villagers on their daily rounds lead their horses and cart down a path toward a church, towering sandstone cliffs in the far distance illuminated by an early morning sun. To the right in the foreground, one of the figures waters his horse beside an opening in the cliff-face, likely one of the entrances to an anchorite cave. Platt captures the awe-inspiring height and airy atmosphere created by one of Britain’s most intriguing geological landscapes.

Anchorite caves, various series of caverns and tunnels carved by river currents that once housed Anchorite hermits, are found throughout the Peak District in Derbyshire, many of them along the River Trent. Records show the sandstone dwellings in use from at least from the 17th through the 19th centuries, though it is thought that they may have been used for this purpose as early as the 7th century.

John Edgar Platt was born on 19 March 1886 in Leek, Staffordshire, England. He was educated at the High School, Newcastle Under Lyme and at Margate Art School and the Leek School of Art before going to study at the Royal College of Art from 1905 to 1908. In 1917. Platt exhibited at the International Society of Sculptors and at the Arts and Craft Society.

After the World War I, Platt exhibited at the New English Art Club and, in 1922, won a gold medal at the International Print Makers' Exhibition. He taught at the Harrogate School of Art throughout 1919, the Derby School of Art in 1920, and was Head of the Department of Fine Art at Edinburgh College of Art between 1920 and 1923, before becoming Principal of the Leicester School of Art from 1923 until 1929, when he moved to London to become head of Blackheath School of Art. Throughout the 1930s Platt produced a number of highly regarded woodcuts and paintings. He published his book Colour Woodcuts: a Book of Reproductions and a Handbook of Method in 1938. From 1938 to 1953, Platt was the President of the Society of Graver Painters in Colour.

John Edgar Platt died on April 29, 1967 in Eastbourne, England.