Rachel Reckitt is known to have studied wood-engraving at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in 1933 and is likely to have taken classes in lino-cutting as well. Alongside her printmaking she also worked as a sculptor and sign maker. Around 1931 she acquired a pet dingo from London Zoo, which became the subject in this print and also anotherof two dingos on the run. Her niece, the novelist Penelope Lively, recalled visiting Reckitt at her rural Somerset house as a six-year-old in 1939 and her aunt assuring everyone that the dingo was “…entirely benign. No one else was confident of that.” It’s a wonderfully simplified study printed in browns, black and white depicting her dingo obediently lying down but pensively looking up with its penetrating black eyes. There’s just a slight hint that it might not be as benign as Reckitt suggested.

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