Walter Hoyle Set of 3 Postcards

In 1965–66, Hoyle produced The Cambridge Series: ten linocuts depicting the colleges of Cambridge, complete with a title page and a contents page hand-cut from cork lettering.This page shows a view of King’s College – Hoyle noted in 1999 that  he ‘dropped turps on it’. The series was published by Editions Alecto, a young Cambridge-based firm founded in 1960 by two students, Michael Deakin and Paul Cornwall-Jones, who had originally hoped simply to earn extra money selling college prints to alumni. By the time Hoyle joined the project, Alecto had grown into a successful publisher, working alongside David Hockney, John Piper, Julian Trevelyan and Hoyle's friend Michael Rothenstein. 

Working with lino cut print technique, this still life depicts a domestic scene centred on two chairs; one with a bowl of fruit, the other with a yellow shirt draped over its back. On the floor, under the second chair a book by Albert Camus is casually placed. As also seen in Hoyle’s Still Life with Mac Orlan and Still Life with Picasso, these objects nod to France. These everyday details offer a glimpse into Hoyle’s domestic environment. 

Dating to c.1965, Interior Ely Cathedral reveals Walter Hoyle's deep fascination with architectural motifs, sacred structures and cosmic geometry. Around this time, Hoyle was collaborating with the celebrated fine-art publishers Editions Alecto on his celebrated Cambridge Series portfolio, and this print belongs firmly to that era, capturing his meticulous study of Gothic church windows, stone facades and intricate tracery. Look closely at the eight-pointed star crowning the Gothic column: it's an early signal of the more abstract, cosmically-inflected direction Hoyle's work would take through the later 1960s. 

Each print was hand-printed by Hoyle himself, in an edition of seventy-five, on his 1885 Harrild Albion press in the studio he had built at Great Saling. Sold individually and as a boxed set, the series proved hugely popular. Large in scale and confident in execution, the prints show the influence of Edward Bawden and John Piper but are above all a showcase for Hoyle's technical experimentation. In particular, Hoyle built dramatic skies from dense layering of roulette and knife marks, giving the print an unusually rich, worked surface.