School is out by Ethel Spowers 1936

School is out by Ethel Spowers, 1936

This work is a linocut or relief print, printed with coloured inks, grey, cobalt blue, a reddish brown and an emerald and bright green from five printing blocks. This is a method of block printing where more than one piece of lino is used to create a design. Often each colour to be printed is applied onto a separate lino block. The printed image measures 30.2 centimetres tall by 26 centimetres wide.

Observing from above we discover a moment of complete abandon as a group of school children propel themselves diagonally across a school yard starting from the top right corner and descending down towards the bottom left. All the children are running in the same direction, full tilt with arms outstretched and legs pumping. A girl in a bright green long-sleeved top takes the lead in the far-left hand corner and turns her head back towards the group and raises her arm above her head as if encouraging the group on. On the left-hand side towards the top of the work there is a dog with grey fur with his head turned back to the group, his mouth open as if barking and also caught up in the excitement of the energy of children let out to play or to head home for the long summer holidays.

It is a large group of boys and girls, and they look to be running on a slope, perhaps down a hill to a playground beyond. The variety of colours utilised from the five printing blocks is mirrored in the children’s dress. Emerald green dresses and long-sleeved tops, brown skirts and shorts, grey sweaters and stockings with pops of bright blue uniform in tops and bottoms. The work is cropped in such a way that the group is concentrated into the right-hand corner of the work and extending out with several of the figures partially cropped out of the picture plane. The clamouring nature of the group suggests school is out with many more children, running, shouting, and angling their bodies to get to the front and out from behind those children taking a lead.

Ethel Spowers and Eveline Syme’s artworks capture the joy and dynamism of movement in sport and play. Through colour, pattern and intersecting lines we see the speed and energy of children skipping, swinging, reaching to catch a ball and the pace of skaters circling the rink in the icy coldness.

Spowers' images of children playing are reminiscent of her own childhood and have a whimsical charm about them. They capture the sense of wonder and curiosity seen in young children.

This colourful work is displayed in a brown wooden frame with an off-white mat board, it is signed E L Spowers in the bottom right-hand corner and dated 1936. The title School is out handwritten in the far-right hand corner and the work is editioned 2 of 50 in pencil in the bottom left hand corner.