Ralph Chub

Ralph Nicholas Chubb (1892 - 1960) was a British poet, painter, illustrator and printer. He was deeply influenced by Whitman, Blake and the romantics, his work was the expression of a very complicated and obsessive inner world, which expressed his anti-materialism, his sexuality and his personal religious vision.

Biography

Ralph Chubb was born in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, on February 8, 1892. His family moved to the historic town of St. Albans before his first birthday. Chubb attended Abbey Gatehouse School in St. Albans and Selwyn College in Cambridge before serving as an officer in the First World War.

He served with distinction but developed neurasthenia and was invalided out in 1918. Between 1919 and 1922 Chubb studied at the Slade School of Art in London. There he met Leon Underwood and other influential artists. He went on to contribute various articles and poems to Underwood's magazine, The Island. Although he exhibited his works at places such as the Goupil Gallery and the Royal Academy of Art, his paintings did not sell. He moved his family to the village of Curridge, near Newbury in Berkshire. He then began to devote his artistic talents to printmaking, which would become his main work for the rest of his life.

His books were created in several stages. His typical 1920s books were a humble accompaniment to his quaint, image-inspired poetry, showcasing Chubb's talents in woodcutting. Even in these early days Chubb's obsession with adolescent males became apparent. He develops this theme more explicitly in An Appendix, a homosexual and spiritualist manifesto edited from a manuscript in the manifesto in italics. An appendix was the first of his printed works that he printed himself and was soon followed by his rich lithographic books to be printed in his own hand; and soon followed by the first of his rich lithographic books, The Sun Spirit. During the 1930s the Chubb books became more elaborate and suggestive. Chubb's aesthetic of boyish masculine forms was crystallized in Water Cherubs, and The Secret Country recounts the stories of his family and his travels with the gypsies. from the New Forest in Hampshire. Ralph's printing work was interrupted by the war, but in 1948 he resumed it, beginning his third period of his career with two enormous volumes: The Child Of Dawn and Flames of Sunrise (flames of sunrise). Every page of these two volumes is filled with dark digressions from Chubb mythology and drawings of symbolic significance. Summarizing briefly Chubb's vision was a prophecy of the redemption of 'Albion', England, by the child-god Ra-el-phaos, of whom Ralph claimed to be a prophet and herald.. This is found in an advertisement for The Heavenly Cupid:

Advert a secret event as tremendous and mysterious as none that has happened in the spiritual history of the world. Advert the inauguration of the third dispensation, the dispensation of the sacred spectrum on earth, and the visible advent to the earth in the form of a young man of thirteen years, naked perfection without stain.

Chubb's work explores other themes. He was always haunted by the memory of a young chorister from St. Albans who disappeared from his life at the very moment Chubb worked up the courage to speak to him. Similarly, he was marked by a brief sexual relationship with another boy when Ralph was 19 years old that seems to have served as a model for his future vision of paradise. Chubb's books became progressively more introspective and paranoid. Seeking to articulate his pederastic desires, he creates a mythology that explains everything to him in a way that he can understand. His work is full of figures of psychological symbology such as angels, knights, servants and child gods that in his dream world represent aspects of his persecuted and introspective personality.

Failing in health and beset by continuing legal and financial difficulties, Ralph Chubb abandoned his controversial mid-1950s jobs in the mid-'50s, and began collecting and reprinting his early poems and childhood memories. The Treasure Trove and The Golden City, which were published posthumously, do not feature the usual profusion of images of young nudes, for instead they offer a glimpse of his childish imagination, and some of his best poetry. At the end of his life he donated his remaining volumes to the National Libraries of Great Britain. In his old age he died at Fair Oak Cottage in Hampshire on January 14, 1960, and was buried next to his parents in Kingsclere Woodlands Church.

Chubb's own statement about his work coincides with the general opinion of critics:

I do not need to be a great painter or writer, but I affirm to be a true free spirit - this is a subtle proof. Find me out, but they won't find me.

Ralph Chubb. (An Appendix)

Work

None of Chubb's book editions exceeds 200 copies, and some of his lithographs exist in as few as 30 or 40 copies, of which only 6 or 7 are meticulously hand-colored by Chubb.

First printing works

• 1924 Manhood
• 1924 The sacrifice of youth
• 1925 A fable of love and war
• 1927 The cloud and the voice
• 1928 Woodcuts
• 1928 The book of god's madness
• 1929 An appendix (duplicated by hand-written text)

Lithographic texts

• 1930 Songs of mankind
• 1931 The sun spirit
• 1934 The heavenly cupid
• 1935 Pastoral and Paradisal Songs (ilustrated by Vincent Stuart and written by Helen Hinkley)
• 1936 Water cherubs
• 1939 The secret country

Prophetic texts after the war

• 1948 The child of dawn
• 1953 Flames of sunrise

Compilation of youth works

• 1957 Treasure trove
• 1960 The golden city

Posthumous Works

• 1965 The day of st. alban
• 1970 Autumn leaves