Metadata : Personal papers of Michael Rothenstein
Collection
- Country:
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
- Holding institution:
- Tate Archive
- Holding institution (official language):
- Tate Archive
- Postal address:
- Tate BritainMillbankLondonUnited KingdomSW1P 4RG
- Web address:
- https://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive
- Country:
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
- Holding institution:
- Tate Archive
- Holding institution (official language):
- Tate Archive
- Postal address:
- Tate BritainMillbankLondonUnited KingdomSW1P 4RG
- Web address:
- https://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive
- Reference number:
- TGA 9818
- Title:
- Personal papers of Michael Rothenstein
- Title (official language):
- Personal papers of Michael Rothenstein
- Creator/accumulator:
- Rothenstein, Michael
- Date(s):
- 1900/1990
- Language:
- English
- Extent:
- 4 boxes
- Scope and content:
- This collection contains correspondence with other members of the Rothenstein family and others, juvenilia including poetry, writings and sketches, draft memoirs and autobiographical fragments and records relating to the creation, sale and exhibition of Rothenstein's artworks.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- William Michael Francis Rothenstein was born in Hampstead, London, on 19 March 1908, the youngest son (of four children) of Sir William Rothenstein and his wife, Alice Mary, née Knewstub. His elder brother Sir John Rothenstein served as director of the Tate Gallery from 1938 to 1964.Michael Rothenstein was educated privately at his parents' home at Far Oakridge in the Stroud valley, Gloucestershire. At the age of 14 he was sent to the School of Art and Woodcarving in South Kensington in 1922-3. After studying there for a year he went on, first to Chelsea Polytechnic school of art (1923-4), where he met the painter Edward Burra, and then to the Central School of Arts and Crafts (1924-6), where he formed a lasting friendship with Barnett Freedman. Before he could complete his studies there, he was struck by a rare glandular illness, myxoedema. Its principal symptoms, profound melancholia and a sometimes acute disturbance of vision, left Rothenstein unable to produce any sustained work until the late 1930s.In 1936 Rothenstein married Betty Desmond Fitzgerald (known as Duffy), with whom he had a son and a daughter. The marriage was dissolved in 1956, and Diana Arnold-Forster (known as Sam) became his second wife in 1958.When Rothenstein did work during the 1930s it was principally as a landscape watercolourist, and this led to a commission in 1940 from the Pilgrim Trust to contribute topographical watercolours of endangered sites to their famous wartime project 'Recording Britain'. By the early 1950s Rothenstein had also-possibly through the influence of his artistic neighbours in Essex, Edward Bawden, John Nash, and John Aldridge-started to produce a few wood- and linocuts. It was not until a series of short visits to Paris in 1957 to work with S. W. Hayter at his celebrated print studio, Atelier 17, however, that he discovered the real direction of his life's work.On his return to England Rothenstein soon found himself at the epicentre of a revolution in attitudes to printmaking, both through his teaching activities and through his books, such as Frontiers of Printmaking (1966). Unable to find any studios with the facilities to produce the kind of prints he wanted to make, he bought a printing press for £5. Starting from the premise that 'anything you could coat with ink could be used to make a print', he began experimenting with large planks, corroded iron, metal strips, and photographic imagery, as well as tools borrowed from metal-working industries such as tin men's snips, electric jigsaws, and drills with wire brushes.Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Rothenstein pursued these directions with huge energy; his wide-ranging activities as a writer and teacher also continued to impact on contemporary artists. By the 1980s, however, his work began to change radically as he abandoned photographic imagery and returned to the basic linocut and woodcut techniques with which he had first started out as a printmaker. At this period, too, came widespread recognition of his artistic achievements with, in the late 1980s, a string of retrospective exhibitions around the country.Michael Rothenstein was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1977 and a Royal Academician in 1984. He died of a heart attack at Stisted, Essex, on 6 July 1993.
- Access points: persons/families:
- Rothenstein
- Rothenstein, Michael
- Subject terms:
- Art
- Correspondence
- Personal records
- Access, restrictions:
- Open.
- Finding aids:
- Online catalogue.
- Yerusha Network member:
- AIM25
- Reference number:
- TGA 9818
- Title:
- Personal papers of Michael Rothenstein
- Title (official language):
- Personal papers of Michael Rothenstein
- Creator/accumulator:
- Rothenstein, Michael
- Date(s):
- 1900/1990
- Language:
- English
- Extent:
- 4 boxes
- Scope and content:
- This collection contains correspondence with other members of the Rothenstein family and others, juvenilia including poetry, writings and sketches, draft memoirs and autobiographical fragments and records relating to the creation, sale and exhibition of Rothenstein's artworks.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- William Michael Francis Rothenstein was born in Hampstead, London, on 19 March 1908, the youngest son (of four children) of Sir William Rothenstein and his wife, Alice Mary, née Knewstub. His elder brother Sir John Rothenstein served as director of the Tate Gallery from 1938 to 1964.Michael Rothenstein was educated privately at his parents' home at Far Oakridge in the Stroud valley, Gloucestershire. At the age of 14 he was sent to the School of Art and Woodcarving in South Kensington in 1922-3. After studying there for a year he went on, first to Chelsea Polytechnic school of art (1923-4), where he met the painter Edward Burra, and then to the Central School of Arts and Crafts (1924-6), where he formed a lasting friendship with Barnett Freedman. Before he could complete his studies there, he was struck by a rare glandular illness, myxoedema. Its principal symptoms, profound melancholia and a sometimes acute disturbance of vision, left Rothenstein unable to produce any sustained work until the late 1930s.In 1936 Rothenstein married Betty Desmond Fitzgerald (known as Duffy), with whom he had a son and a daughter. The marriage was dissolved in 1956, and Diana Arnold-Forster (known as Sam) became his second wife in 1958.When Rothenstein did work during the 1930s it was principally as a landscape watercolourist, and this led to a commission in 1940 from the Pilgrim Trust to contribute topographical watercolours of endangered sites to their famous wartime project 'Recording Britain'. By the early 1950s Rothenstein had also-possibly through the influence of his artistic neighbours in Essex, Edward Bawden, John Nash, and John Aldridge-started to produce a few wood- and linocuts. It was not until a series of short visits to Paris in 1957 to work with S. W. Hayter at his celebrated print studio, Atelier 17, however, that he discovered the real direction of his life's work.On his return to England Rothenstein soon found himself at the epicentre of a revolution in attitudes to printmaking, both through his teaching activities and through his books, such as Frontiers of Printmaking (1966). Unable to find any studios with the facilities to produce the kind of prints he wanted to make, he bought a printing press for £5. Starting from the premise that 'anything you could coat with ink could be used to make a print', he began experimenting with large planks, corroded iron, metal strips, and photographic imagery, as well as tools borrowed from metal-working industries such as tin men's snips, electric jigsaws, and drills with wire brushes.Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Rothenstein pursued these directions with huge energy; his wide-ranging activities as a writer and teacher also continued to impact on contemporary artists. By the 1980s, however, his work began to change radically as he abandoned photographic imagery and returned to the basic linocut and woodcut techniques with which he had first started out as a printmaker. At this period, too, came widespread recognition of his artistic achievements with, in the late 1980s, a string of retrospective exhibitions around the country.Michael Rothenstein was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1977 and a Royal Academician in 1984. He died of a heart attack at Stisted, Essex, on 6 July 1993.
- Access points: persons/families:
- Rothenstein
- Rothenstein, Michael
- Subject terms:
- Art
- Correspondence
- Personal records
- Access, restrictions:
- Open.
- Finding aids:
- Online catalogue.
- Yerusha Network member:
- AIM25
