Eileen Mayo obviously had a love for cats as seen in this personal feline study. There’s a harmonised balance in the print and the cats look as ifthey are inseparable. Mayo specialised in depicting animals and the domestic cat was one of her favourite subjects. Cats in the Tree was a favourite linocut of Claude Flight’s and he used as a frontispiece for his instruction manual The Art and Craft of Lino Cutting and Printing (1934). He described it as a linocut of good form and colour composition. Clark’s Siamese Cats is much more simplified. They lounge round, curled up with each other, against a plain backdrop. A far cry from the images of mechanisation that Flight encouraged they remain excellent examples of the way that imagery could be simplified in linocuts.

(One O'Clock Jump: British Linocuts from the Jazz Age, 7 December 2024 - 11 May 2025)