The Brighton Aquatints
This illustrated book was a startling revival of a style that had not been seen for about a century, and perhaps the choice of Lord Alfred Douglas as author of the text that came with it was also a gesture to the past. It was modelled on the English 'picturesque' travel books of the late eighteenth centuries, which had themselves used aquatint as a medium, and had the format of a brief text on each plate, headed by an extravagant variety of typeface as a title page. Piper's illustrations were not, however, nostalgic, but sharply contemporary, for the emphasis was not on the Regency buildings but on the variety of styles existing in the town as it was in 1939, including a gothic revival church, the Pier, a house by Wells Coates and modern housing. The extravagance of Brighton allowed a technique that was almost a capriccio of different styles of building put together - as in Piper's 'Lithographic Panorama of Cheltenham'. published in the same issue of Signature - and hence a collage-like method of composition. As with the abstract paintings, they seem to be assembled from a variety of flat pieces.
Brighton
From Station Yard 1939
Brighton
Street Sussex 1939
Brunswick
Terrace 1939
Chapel
of St George Kemp Town 1939
Kemp
Town 1939
Metropole
Hotel from the West Pier 1939
Mixed
Styles Regency Victorian Modern 1939
Regency
Square 1939
Regency
Square from the West Pier 1939
Royal
Pavillion 1939
First
Avenue Hotel Hove 1939
Bedford
Square 1939
St
Bartholomew's Church 1939