I’d never heard of artists Cyril Power and Sybil Andrews and I thoroughly enjoyed making their acquaintance in this comprehensive and well-researched, if rather workaday, dual biography. Jenny Uglow does a good job of exploring their lives and work, and includes many illustrations with expert commentary, but overall I found the narration somewhat bland and not very immersive. A worthy rather than an absorbing biography.

I found this book so very interesting and would put it in my top five favourite books of 2021. The in-depth look at the lives and careers of both Sybil Andrews and Cyril Power built a wonderful picture of the evolving art scene in 1920’s London. Their creative modernist style is beautifully portrayed in the illustrations of some of their later linocut pieces. Their story also evokes a colourful picture of London in the ‘Jazz age’ and introduces the reader to their network of artist friends and their involvement with the Grosvenor School of Art. I was fascinated by their story but this book also left me wanting to know more about the many other artists mentioned. I wish I had been around at what must have been a very exciting time in the development of modern art. Highly recommended.

This was so interesting. I had absolutely no idea about these artists despite knowing their work. I was gifted a a set of postcards as a teen of Sybil Andrews work and loved it ever since. Certainly a fascinating story if an odd one.

This is an interesting look at the lives of an unlikely artistic duo, Sybil Andrews (Bury St Edmunds 1898-1992 Campbell River, Canada) and Cyril Power (London 1872-1951), whose rather striking, modernist linocuts have gone up in esteem as the years have passed.
Uglow's is a rather cold, factual account which at times reads as just the fleshed-up notes found in Sybil's diary (on which Cyril also made annotations). The matter-of-fact presentation nevertheless enhances how their artistic collaboration and personal relationship challenges assumptions in all sorts of ways (who had the power in their collaboration, how was this yielded, who made the key moves), presenting a rather compelling story of a strong-willed independent woman and a man who decided in his late forties to bypass a family of four children and architectural career, both intent in becoming artists and both spurring each other to actually make it. This is not a story about artist as genius, but as artist as a determined, quite normal, yet obviously creative individual who keeps trying to make her mark in a rather petit-bourgeoise manner, without grand gestures, keeping faith with the status quo yet rebelling on a number of key elements.
The narrative marries critical descriptions of the prints with the mundanity and apparent normalcy of their life (the weirdnesses, and there are many, are left for us to ponder, they are not analysed in depth, the author does not pretend to enter her protagonists' minds. By accumulation (at times I thought the text was a bit repetitive, but I suppose that most lives are!), Uglow presents a convincing account of their milieu and lives between the First and Second World Wars, bookends to their joint story. Yet, despite the title, I feel that this is in fact Sybil's story.
With many thanks to the publisher via NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this intriguing artistic pair.

I've loved the Lino prints of Sybil Andrews and Cyril Power for a long time and have always been bowled over by the economy of line and the sense of speed and fluidity they were able to convey in their work. Uglow's book is a great balance between the work and their lives and not just the things that influenced their work but the way they created it. Their work ethic was amazing and thanks to the vast body of work they left behind them, there is much to go on here, despite the fact that they destroyed the papers and letters they sent to each other. This doesn't ever feel thin or rushed. I appreciate that the book was about their work and life together but the last chapter on Sybil's life after Cyril's death was the only part of the book I wished there was more of, as her life in Canada and later fame sound fascinating, but this really should be an entire book in itself I suspect. Good pictures and good descriptions of key works for which there are no pictures, making them easy to visualise. I know I will refer back to this book and think about it when I look at the works again. A great perspective.

For years, prints inherited from her parents hung in Uglow’s house, enjoyed but not actively considered. This book is a result of Uglow’s research into Cyril Power, who created The Eight print, and his partner for his most artistically productive years, Sybil Andrews, who made Bringing In the Boat.

By focusing on the story of two artists primarily remembered (if at all) for their linocuts, Uglow opens up the avant-garde artistic world in London between 1920 and 1940, most of which has now been forgotten. Uglow narrates the lives and describes the art of Sybil Andrews and Cyril Power, most active between 1925, when they formed part of the “Grosvenor School”, to 1938. I had heard of neither before reading this book, but have a general interest in the inter-war period, having read several social histories. This book enlarged my understanding of the period.
Initially providing twin biographies, the book starts slowly by alternating between Sybil’s and Cyril’s stories, building the lives of the two individuals prior to their meeting in 1919 when Sybil is twenty one and Cyril who is about 26 years older, has married, has four children, a struggling architectural career and has published a book on medieval architecture. Uglow manages this initial chronological unevenness by expanding upon Sybil’s ancestors in and around Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk.
Having worked as a teacher and learned about art as an amateur for about three years (conventional drawings and watercolours), being befriended by Cyril who informally taught her (and probably became her lover), Sybil moved to London in autumn 1922 to attend an Art School. Cyril follows in 1923, deserting his family (but not divorcing, as a Catholic), although he continued to provide some financial support.

Uglow describes London in 1923, the culture and the coming of modernity, the “Jazz Age”, after the austerity of the Great War and the immediate post-war period. This allows the book to also provide a social history of London, as Andrews and Power were interested in depicting modern social and sporting activities such as ice skating, motor racing and funfairs, as well as modern life in the form of mechanised workers and the London Underground (the “tube”), as shown in prints of the station platforms, escalators and trains.
However Andrews and Power must make a living, as well as create art, and so from 1925 with the encouragement of Claude Flight both teach art at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art, and sell linocut prints, to which they had been introduced by Flight. The description of the technical and artistic development of their linocut style, which they seem to have developed jointly, together with the subject matter and approach to sales is explored whilst interweaving their biographical stories and asides about their milieu.
In 1933 they held their first joint exhibition, displaying monotype prints, as well as their now well known linocuts. Monotypes seem a move back from the modernity of linocuts, and all Andrews’ monotype pictures were lost in a gallery warehouse fire, but Cattawade Bridge by Power looks more realistic, although the colouring is post-modern. (Uglow describes a monotype as “a curious creature – not a print, as it can’t be produced in multiples, and not a painting, as it is ‘printed’. In a way it is a reverse painting. Using printer’s ink or oils straight from the tube, ... painted directly onto a metal plate to get the tones and lights ... wanted.”)
Life is lived fully, and Uglow describes concert going, holidays, music making, which provide the inspiration for their art, as well as the work involved in printing and selling their art. An intense period of work and living to 1938, changes by fear of war and Andrews deciding that she no longer wants to live in London. A move to the New Forest by Andrews, with Power only visiting at weekends gradually changes their relationship, and war comes with Andrews working in a military boat building team, where she meets her future husband, and so Power leaves (returning to his wife after more than twenty years apart). This is dynamically and impressionistically described, with plenty of illustrations of the art described (black and white) and some photos.
There follows a brief description of Andrews and Power’s subsequent lives, with Power dying in 1951 and Power moving to the west coast of Canada with her husband, where making a living was hard until interest in the Grosvenor School arose in the 1970’s, and where she died in 1992.

The cover of my Faber edition is a mashup of Andrews’ Racers and Power’s The Escalator.

I received a Netgalley copy of this book, but this review is my honest opinion.

This charming book provides a gentle narrative of the artistic careers of Sybil Andrews and Cyril Power - best known for their stylish Modernistic posters from the heroic Modernist age of the 30s. Uglow shows us the domestic life and cultural contexts of the artists that produced some of the more striking images. Cyril and Powers learned how to present modernity in stylised ways, using shape, form, and pattern in ways perfectly suited to the new popular graphic arts formats (linocuts and posters) for which legibility and style were primary factors .

But, despite being about a couple of Modernist pioneers, this is almost the polar opposite of Ede’s Savage Messiah - about Gaudier-Brzeska - where there is high drama in the writing and the subject’s life. Sybil and Cyril were not geniuses blazing through the surface of humdrum existence, but talented individuals, honing their craft, finding and making use of opportunities that came along. They worked, loved, and suffered in ways that are made entirely relatable; they liked the theatre, history, high church services, and early music. In short, they are classic examples of Alexandra Harris’ Romantic Moderns (2015), guided by history and tradition and warily curious about modern innovations.

Uglow is attentive to the how-to books they read, the mentors they encountered, and the daily labour they gave to their art. She makes is a remarkably self-effacing guide, clearly writes to share her sense of curiosity and admiration. The author’s intelligence, painstaking research and imaginative powers are, to a quite unusual degree, submerged within the surface narrative. I found it fascinating, though as a joint biography, it does end abruptly with Powers’ death, with a couple of short chapters wrapping up Andrews’ continuing career. It makes a slightly odd ending.

This study complements other great books about interwar graphic artists: Malcolm Yorke’s unjustly neglected books, Spirit of Place (1988) and Edward Bawden and His Circle (2007); Alexandra Harris’ justly celebrated Romantic Moderns (2015), Fiona McCarthy’s biography of Eric Gill (1990) and Michael Saler’s The Avant-Garde in Interwar England (1998).