The Art and Writings of J.G. Lubbock
These images are drawn from a body of work by the Old Etonian artist and engineer J.G. Lubbock (1915-2019). By the time of his death at the age of 103, Lubbock had published 15 extraordinary books of intricate and colourful prints combining his unique vision of the natural world with accompanying meditations in highly distinctive, poetic prose.
‘Rocks and peaks’
Perceptions of the Earth (1977) ECL Lt.2.20
‘Eclipse’
From the Garden to the Galaxy (1980) ECL Lt.2.21
‘Cape Horn’
Love for the Earth (1990) ECL Lt.2.23
‘Rock Pool’
The Realm of Nature Mine (2005) ECL Lt.2.26
‘Heights (in the Rockies)’
Landscapes of the Spirit (1994) ECL Lt.2.24
Born in 1915, Joseph Guy Lubbock spent his early childhood in Norfolk, Essex and Kent, before attending Eton in C.E. Sladden’s house from 1928 to 1932. After a degree in Engineering at Trinity College, Cambridge, he worked on the development of the Spitfire and on the Wellington bomber. During the Second World War he was evacuated from Brest and later served as a bomb disposal expert, removing bombs from railway lines on the home front.
Lubbock, a keen artist from childhood, studied drawing at Heatherly’s and St Martin’s School of Art after the war before returning to engineering to support his family, working on the early development of computers for gunnery control, missile guidance and bomber detection systems. In the early 1960s the family moved to Suffolk in his native East Anglia, where he returned to his early love of painting as well as writing and sailing.
A study of Christian medieval illuminated manuscripts kindled a desire to produce his own art in book form, resulting in Art and the Spiritual Life (1967), exploring the parallels between the disciplines of art and religion. The book’s success enabled him to take early retirement and concentrate entirely on his art, and his next book, Aspects of Art & Science (1969) explored his interest in designs and patterns in physics and nature: atoms, galaxies, the seas and the mountains, and living organisms. His subsequent books, which innovatively combine printing techniques, reveal his increasing interest in the natural environment and its spiritual aspects, from the very small to the very large.
Lubbock’s art and writing was inspired by his travels to remote parts of the world ranging from the Himalayas, the Yang-Tse Gorge in China, and the Atacama Desert to the Galapagos and Antarctica. His special affinity with the sea and mountains was balanced by an intense awareness of the nature on his doorstep in the gardens, fields and rivers of Suffolk.
Always attuned to the spiritual aspects of nature but with an engineer’s scientific perspective, from the 1990s onwards his books show an increasing awareness of the fragility of the environment in the face of human activity:
‘As awareness grows of the vital balances of the atmosphere the lithosphere and life forming part of an interdependent order held in a state of critical equilibrium, we learn that we cannot harm the least part of the lands and seas without threatening all our ecosystem, and if the acceleration of extinctions is to be slowed, many more of humanity must acquire greater sensitivity to the critical fragility of natural communities, or dozens of species may soon be departing each day.’
Stephie Coane, Deputy Librarian and Curator of Modern Collections
