Farewell to 'Monks' Calendar'
by Ralph Hyde

This article was published in the 13 January 2000 issue of Country Life, see the copyright footnote. At the time of writing it was thought that production of the calendar would cease after the year 2000 issue. [The only illustrations in the printed article are Anthony Dyson with his copperplate, and the 2000 calendar.]

How sad it is that when Anthony Dyson, artist, engraver, and private publisher, prints off his Calendarium Londinense at his Black Star Press in a room protruding from the back of his house in Teddington next month, it will be for the very last time.

The Calendarium, better known to curators and discerning print collectors as 'Monk's Calendar', has been with us since 1903. Unlike other calendars you don't chuck it out at the end of the year, for this one carries an etched headpiece – an original print of a London scene. But 'Monk's Calendar' no longer pays. The millennium year, 2000, Anthony Dyson has reluctantly decided, is the appropriate point to call it a day.

The Calendar's founder was William Monk, born in Chester in 1863, the son of a gunmaker. After a spell in Antwerp he returned to Chester and worked from his studio on the River Dee, issuing prints of Chester but also of London. In 1892 he moved to London, setting up at the Hogarth Studios in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square.

Fitzrovia was still then something of an artists' colony, and thanks to the Society of Painter-Etchers (today it is called the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers) the work of British etchers of the moment was considered respectable, exhibitable, and eminently collectable. The great British Etching Revival was under way. Prices would soar, and artists such as William Strang, Joseph Pennell, Sir David Muirhead Bone, Nathaniel Sparks, Francis Dodd, and William Washington would flourish. It was in this scene that Monk launched his Calendar.

The Calendarium Londinensis was a neat idea. Each year a new London print would be issued on a sheet of rag paper measuring 430 by 330mm that would also carry conventional calendar information. The first was published jointly from Vigo Street, Burlington Gardens by Monk and a fine art publisher friend, Elkin Mathews. The subject of the print was St James's Palace.

In 1906 the two men introduced more text, accommodating bank holidays and quarter days, and providing a thought for the year – usually on the theme of time ('Come what may/ Time and the hour/ runs through/ the roughest day'). During the Great War Monk's thoughts became sternly patriotic, ecnomically 'God Save the King!' in 1915, and 'Britannia's name/ from age to age,/ Has like the cliffs/ stood fast!' in 1918. The 1919 Calendar carries a view of the War Office, search-lights raking the night sky and a gun carriage making its way from right to left.
The next year's scene featured the Cenotaph in a Whitehall decked out with victory flags.
By 1925 profound thoughts had degenerated into greeting-card ditties. 'This is the famous Trafalgar Square/ Where meetings, and speeches,/ are free as air./ Lord Nelson oft laughs up his empty sleeve/ A frothing and foaming and make believe.' Mercifully in 1934 ditties were abandoned.

Monk moved back to Chester in 1933 and died on 7 April 1937. A note on the 1938 Calendar explained that this year's image – Lambeth Reach and Westminster – had been drawn and etched by the late W. Monk back in 1932.

In 1939 and until 1968 the Calendars were etched by Leonard Squirrell, an East Anglian artist who drew Norfolk churches and has been called 'the last member of the Norwich School.' Squirrell's style was generally lighter than Monk's, but his street scenes capture little of the noise and bustle of London. One of his most successful images appears on the 1942 Calendar, and shows St Paul's Cathedral which 'providentially did not suffer from the fires which destroyed the surrounding buildings on December 29th 1940.'
Another successful composition is Westminster Abbey at the time of the 1953 Coronation, showing Eric Bedford's Temporary Annexe and Jones Woodford's 'greatly admired Queen's beasts.'
Squirrell's 1965 Calendar of Liverpool Street Station depicts the electric and diesel trains that had recently replaced steam locomotives, one of which nevertheless he inserts on the etching 'for old time's sake.'
From 1967 to 1970 the Calendars were drawn and etched by Harry N. Eccleston, until recently President of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers, and from 1971 to 1986 by Lawrence Josset. Josset was first and foremost a mezzotint engraver, a 'magnificent anachronism' to use Anthony Dyson's words. His most celebrated print was a mezzotint portrait of Queen Elizabeth II after Pietro Annigoni, which he hand-printed in colour. Most of his plates, including 'Monk's Calendar', were printed at the Putney premises of Thomas Ross & Son, a long-established firm whose huge stock of original copper plates dated back to the early seventeenth century. The firm's historian was Anthony Dyson, and when Thomas Ross were taken over in June 1989 it was Anthony Dyson who was assigned the right to produce 'Monk's Calendar' in the future. The Black Star Press, named after his Star rolling press which was always covered in black ink, came into being, occupying a studio built onto the back of Mrs Dyson's kitchen. Here Anthony Dyson restores old copper plates and prints new impressions, and it is here that he draws, etches, and prints new 'Monk's Calendars.'

On the Calendars Anthony Dyson has introduced one or two new features. The prints are no longer etchings but aquatints. At the beginning of the century when modern British etchings were in such fierce demand, new prints were often being acquired for speculation rather than for aesthetic appreciation, and speculators were known to rush them to the auction rooms even before they had paid for them. Monk despised such commercialism and therefore refused to sign and number his impressions. Dyson, however, does so, not in order to enhance their value, but in order to emphasise that 'Monk's Calendars' are real prints, not reproductions. His editions are small - 75 for 'St Pancras Hotel' in 1990.....

.....up to 350 for 'The New Globe Theatre' in 1996.
In practice he prints far fewer copies. The Calendar today has only 46 regular subscribers, and about 70 impressions are printed off. The price of 'The Millennium Dome' in 1999 was £13.00.
The price of this year's Calendar is going to be £15.00, expensive for a normal calendar maybe, but madly cheap for an original aquatint of this quality.

In his studio, occupied by a long bench, book shelves laden with reference works, and two rolling presses,Tony Dyson has been magically creating his image for the 2000 Calendar – a composite image of London based on the theme of time - using preliminary sketches made on the spot, photographs, and the final working drawing.

In my opinion the images on the Calendar over the last five years have been the finest that this publication has ever had. My favourite is the image on the 1998 Calendar which invites us to view the Cutty Sark from her rudder.
The deep perspective is powerful. Artistically, without question, the Calendar is in its prime, but for Anthony Dyson it has been a labour of love. 'If someone else were to come forward to draw, print, and publish it and somehow keep 'Monk's Calendar' going into the next millennium that would make me a very happy man', he sighs.

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Copyright of the text of this article and the photograph of Anthony Dyson are owned by Country Life, who have given permission for their use. Copyright of the Monk's Calendar digital images is owned by MOTCO Enterprises Limited.