School Prints

The School Prints, published in the 1940’s, were an extraordinary succession of colour lithographs, editioned in large numbers and sold at a low cost to schools throughout the UK. Deprived by World War II of visual stimulus, these prints made it possible for British school children to encounter original works of art by leading British and European artists in their own classrooms. The artists who participated in the scheme included L. S. Lowry, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, John Nash, Julian Trevelyan, John Tunnard, Hans Feibusch and the continental artists Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso to name but a few.

The story behind the School Prints commenced in 1945, when a young lady called Brenda Rawnsley, commissioned a number of British artists to produce prints which could be sold inexpensively to schools. Her aspiration was to bring quality art to pupils who might not have had access to a local art gallery or, if one was available, lacked the courage to enter it. Her lack of artistic knowledge and experience encouraged her to seek assistance from the likes of Herbert Read and R. R. Tomlinson the then head of Art Inspectorate for Schools. Sadly the logistical problems surrounding the distribution of prints to over 4000 British schools thwarted the splendid objectives for which it was designed. For many years the vast majority of the lithographs lay undisturbed until in the 1990’s they were re-discovered and avidly devoured by the collecting public. In 2007 Pallant House Gallery, Chichester held an exhibition comprising a selection of these lithographs and a book written by Ruth Artmonsky was published at the same time.