David Jones ( 1895–1974 )
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; with Ten Engravings on Copper by David Jones, 1929
Author; Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
Contributor; David Jones
Place of Origin; Britain
Materials and Techniques; copper, copper engraving
Description ; Small illustration showing the Mariner attempting to pray as he is cursed by the dying sailors around him, the scene corresponding to Coleridge’s text. Plate six of ten (15) for a set of prints entitled ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ originally published in 1929. First edition book, 38 pages
Categories; prints, literature
Jones was an English poet and graphic artist, his reputation as the former largely attributable to his epic poems In Parenthesis (1937) and The Anathemata (1952). As his father was both a Welsh printer and preacher, and he himself a lifelong Catholic, Jones is often understood through the religious themes so inherent to his artistic endeavors, themes derived from both Catholicism, as well as Celtic myth and legend derivative of his Welsh heritage. As a youth he attended the Camberwell School of Arts, and, after serving in the first World War, resumed his education at the Westminster School of Art. He wrote much, his works fragmentary and often unfinished, and so he published little. Throughout his life, he demonstrated little interest in either reputation or recognition for his work within the public sphere, and, suffering from neurotic breakdowns and depressive episodes resulting from his service in the war, was somewhat solitary and a little, perhaps, reclusive to society at large, though he possessed a number of close friends. He has lived in relative obscurity in the popular conception since his death in the late 20th century, but was recognized in his lifetime by some of the more renown of his contemporaries in the poetic circles - contemporaries such as W.H Auden and T.S Elliot, and so he reserves for himself, as well as his works, the reputation of an overlooked genius of his generation.
Relative to the engraving itself, it was commissioned by the bookseller and radio producer Douglas Cleverdon (1903-1987) in the early months of 1927. Such was not happenstance; Jones desperately wished to illustrate Coleridge's work, in large part due to its overt themes of religion, forgiveness, and the preternatural. Once commissioned, the process necessitated that Jones collect photographs of ships, rigging, as well as an albatross, and, because working with copper was a challenging task unforgiving of errors, he made between 150 and 200 preliminary sketches for every plate before commencing engraving. His style reflects this ; it is sparse, and clean, utilizing only cross hatch to enhance shadows and provide depth to the illustration. Each of these original engravings, of which there were ten in composite, was 7 by 5 ½ inches.
Insomuch as the choice of picture and the relevance to the avant-garde, Coleridge, throughout his literary career, spoke often of the theme of dreams and their importance to poetry, which was partly resultant from his creative genius and also fueled by an opium addiction potent enough to play a contributing role in his death at the age 62. The concepts of dream-like elements, states of dissociation, psychological themes, as well as tropes of personal suffering and mental disease were all subjects of our class work. The supernatural aspects of Coleridge’s texts particularly brought to mind the paintings of de Chirico, in their themes of a mixture of the beautiful and unquieting. Though Coleridge and de Chirico held profoundly different methods of expression, they are equals in their genius to capture states of “otherness,” which go beyond the natural.
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"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." The Aldine 8, no. 9 (1877): 288-89. Accessed April 19, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/20637382.
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