Tag Archives: dolf rieser

An artist and teacher in West Hampstead

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WHILE I WAS STUDYING to become a dentist (in the late 1970s), I used to attend an etching and engraving class in a studio in West Hampstead’s Sumatra Road. The class was supervised by the owner of the studio, my mother’s cousin Dolf Rieser (1898-1983). Like my mother, he was born in South Africa. They were both born in King Williams Town, but he was 23 years older than her.

An engraving by Dolf Rieser

Dolf ‘s childhood memories evoke South Africa as it was at the turn of the century (19th/20th) and are recorded in his unfinished autobiography (dolfrieser.com). Here is an extract that gives a flavour of them:


“The climate of King William’s Town was particularly difficult to bear and my mother suffered greatly especially where her nerves were concerned. I vividly remember her awful attacks of migraine when she had to stay in a darkened room. In the end we decided to leave South Africa, as I shall relate later on . My uncle, my mother’s brother, was at that time living on the border of Basutoland. He was running a small trading post and also kept some horses and sheep. This place was right up on the high plateau and was called Moshes-Ford after the famous Basuto chief, Moshes. My uncle invited us up to him for a holiday and I think we first took a train and then had to continue by horse and carriage, which presumably was also the postal service at the time. I remember well an “ooutspan” for lunch near an immense field full of dried bones and skeletons. These were the remains of the “Rinderpest” which shortly before had nearly wiped out the cattle of South Africa. I played football with a cow or ox skull, very much to the annoyance of the grown-ups. The following night we had to spend at the German Pastor’s home and I remember how impressed I was with the enormous bed and unknown eiderdowns.”


The ’Rinderpest’ was a disease that afflicted cattle.

During his classes at Sumatra Road, he would regale us with stories of Paris in the 1920’s and 1930s, when he was there learning etching an engraving in the studios of both Stanley Hayter and Joseph Hecht. One story that sticks in my mind is how he used to attend the same Parisian café as Pablo Picasso. The great master sat at one table alongside the the other leading artists in Paris, and junior artists like Dolf sat close by at another table.

Dolf was an excellent teacher. He showed us how to etch and engrave. However, what impressed me most is that he had the ability to look at his students’ works in progress, understand what we were trying to achieve, and then provide constructive (rather than prescriptive) advice.

I really miss Dolf, even though it is so many years since he died. He had a wonderful sense of humour, was a wonderful raconteur, and, having once trained as a biologist (before becoming an artist), a wonderfully adventurous approach to his métier.

Hard sell

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clean mouth teeth dentist

 

An engraving of the Tower of Babel by Dolf Rieser (see: More about Dolf Rieser) used to hang overlooking the first landing of the staircase in our family home in north-west London.

In my thirties I worked as a dentist and lived in north Kent. Almost every weekend, I used to drive to visit my widowed father in our family home. On one of these visits I noticed a box lying on the landing beneath the Tower of Babel engraving. It was an unopened, sealed box containing a dental water pik. This is a device that can be used to pulse tiny jets of water between neighbouring teeth in order to dislodge deposits of dental plaque (bacterial debris). It has proved to be a far less effective method of removing plague than dental floss, which itself is less eggective than the use of  tiny interdental brushes. I was a bit surprised that my father had bought a water pik as he is not a lover of gadgets.

For several weeks after I first noticed the unopened package, I kept returning to my family home and seeing the unopened package, which was gradually becoming covered with dust. Eventually, I asked my father about it.

He told me that each time he visited his dentist, ‘D’, he was asked to purchase one of these water piks. After a series of visits, he paid out almost £100 to buy one. I asked him why he had wasted his money on something he was not going to use. He said:

“D kept on pestering me to buy one. He was getting on my nerves, so to shut him up I bought one. I have no intention of using it.”

No doubt profit was not the only motive for D wanting my father to own a water pik, and he might have been surprised by my father’s reason for buying one, namely to put an end to his ‘hard sell’.

 

To see the Tower of Babel engraving, click: HERE

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

 

Art and science

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ART AND SCIENCE

 

From my childhood until I qualified as a dentist in 1982, aged 30, I drew and painted a great deal. Creating pictures was one of my favourite pastimes. In the late 1970s when I was already studying to become a dentist, I joined a weekly print-making class. It was held in the West Hampstead studio of my mother’s cousin, the etcher/engraver Dolf Rieser (1898-1983; see: https://dolfrieser.com/biography/ ). 

The image above is from an etching that I created in Dolf’s studio. It is a composition inspired by electron micography of intra-cellular structures. At the time I created it, I had just finished a PhD in a biological subject and was studying biology that was considered necessary to qualify as a dentist.  Interestingly, Dolf had also studied biology (genetics) in his youth, receiving a doctorate in the subject. He took to artistic pursuits after completing his studies in biology. Later in his life he wrote a book called “Art and Science” (published in 1972 by Studio Vista). Dolf was an inspiring teacher with a great understanding of compositional technique.

In 1982, I began practising as a dentist. It goes without saying that a dentist’s work involves a great deal of use of the hands and fingers. All day long, five days a week, I was doing the fiddly kind of things with my hands and fingers. Prior to qualification as a dentist, I had used my hands and fingers to create often complex images (drawings, paintings, etchings, and copper engravings). I found that my urge to create images diminished rapidly after I began practising dentistry. I suppose that the clinical activities satisfied my need to employ my manual dexterity in other ways. Sadly, now that I am retired I have not (yet) gone back to creating images. Now my fingers are kept busy at the keyboard, creating books and blog articles.

Come up and see my etchings…

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“Come up and see my etchings…” is often interpreted as being an invitation to sexual adventures. But when I used to say those words, there were, actually, genuine etchings to be viewed.

My late mother had a cousin Dolf Rieser (1898-1983; https://dolfrieser.com/biography/), who used to hold classes to teach etching and engraving. He lived in West Hampstead. I used to attend his classes onc evening a week while I was a dental student (1976-82). Dolf was an excellent teacher and an inventive artist. His comments on composition were constructive and and always apt.  

Dolf, who had a doctorate in some aspect of biology, became interested in art long before WW2. In the compulsory tea breaks that we had during the classes, he would tell us about his life as a young artist in Paris. He would frequent the same cafés as Picasso and other famous artists. The great artists in Paris during the thirties sat at one table presided over by Picasso. Budding artists like Dolf sat at neighbouring tables.  He was very proud of a small picture by Joan Miró, which hang next to the door to his studio in London. Miró, who was five years older than Dolf, had presented his picture to his young friend ( i.e. Dolf).

Having studied in Switzerland, Dolf had learnt how to ski in the 1920s. He used to ski every year in Switzerland while he was becoming an artist in Paris. He told us that in the thirties when he used to arrive at the railway station in Paris in order to visit the mountains with his skis, people would stop him to ask him what he was carrying because in those days hardly anyone in Paris went skiing. Few people in Paris had ever seen skis.

I loved the classes. It was wonderful becoming so immersed in what I was doing that I lost all sense of time and, more importantly, everything that was worring me at the time evaporated from my head during the three hours each week while I was engrossed in creating an artwork.

I graduated as a dentist in early 1982 and went into practice. Soon after that, Dolf died. Also, my urge to create artworks (prints, drawings, and paintings) seemed to disappear. I suppose that was because I was working all day with my hands in the surgery, my need to do fiddly manual tasks in my spare time, such as drawing and etching, diminished.

By now, you are probably wondering whether I ever invited anyone to come up and see my etchings. Well, of course I did, but I will not tell you whom I invited. Suffice it to say that the woman I eventually married has a good collection of my works!

 

The picture is a detail of an etching by Adam Yamey