Brixham Town

John Edgar Platt

Brixham Town offers a view of the harbor of the small fishing town Brixham, England with moored sailing vessels in the foreground backdropped by a hillside of houses. Platt was one of the earliest British color woodcut artists who used the Japanese method of printing with water-based inks. For this image, he utilized the Japanese technique of "bokashi", which is done by hand applying a gradation of ink to a moistened printing block.

Platt illustrates "Brixham Town" in color (Plate 1) in his book "Colour Woodcuts". He notes about his printing: "Gradations of colour over wide areas are readily produced (note sea in 'Mullion Cove', Plate VI), 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 (see 'Brixham Town', Plate I, and 'Two Shells', Plate XVIII). The clean-cut character of the flat colour masses leads to a definiteness of form; the gradations provide a gracious element."

John Edgar Platt was born in Leek, Staffordshire, England on 19 March 1886. He was educated at the Leek School of Art before attending the Royal College of Art from 1905 to 1908. Platt quickly developed his skills in oil painting, watercolor, and woodcut, and held his first exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1913.

After 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 held numerous teaching positions until he moved to London in 1929 to become head of Blackheath School of Art. Throughout the 1930s, Platt produced a number of highly regarded woodcuts and paintings. In 1938, he published Colour Woodcuts: a Book of Reproductions and a Handbook of Method. He was the president of the Society of Graver Painters in Colour from 1938 to 1953.