Cyril Power

Cyril Edward Power was born on 17 December 1872 in Chelsea, London, the son and grandson of architects. He trained as an architect in his father's firm and was awarded the Soane Medallion by the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1900 for a design for an art school, becoming an Associate Member of the RIBA in 1902. He went on to lecture in architectural design and history at University College London and at Goldsmiths' College, and in 1912 published a three-volume study, A History of English Mediaeval Architecture, illustrated with his own drawings. During the First World War he served with the Royal Flying Corps.

In 1922 Power moved to London with the young artist Sybil Andrews, and the two enrolled at Heatherley's School of Fine Art in the early 1920s. In 1925 he helped establish the Grosvenor School of Modern Art with Claude Flight and Iain Macnab, teaching there while developing the bold, faceted color linocuts, works such as The Eight, Speed Trial, and The Tube Station, for which he is now best known. He and Andrews shared a studio for roughly twenty years, exhibiting together at the Redfern Gallery and in international print shows in Shanghai, Melbourne, Chicago, and Los Angeles through the late 1920s and 1930s. During the Second World War he served on the home front as a surveyor for a Heavy Rescue Squad, and in his later years turned increasingly to painting in oils. Cyril Power died in London on 25 May 1951, at the age of 78.

Power's reputation rests on his central role in the Grosvenor School's project of applying a modernist, machine-age vocabulary to the linocut, a cheap and democratic medium that Claude Flight championed as suited to depicting speed, industry, and urban transit. His prints of Underground trains, sporting crews, and motor races have been read consistently as attempts to translate the sensation of modern motion into flat, rhythmic color. His critical standing rose substantially with the rediscovery of Grosvenor School printmaking from the late twentieth century onward, culminating in his inclusion in the 2008 survey Machine Age: Rhythms of Modern Life 1914 to 1939 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and, more recently, in a dedicated 2025 to 2026 exhibition at Lyndsey Ingram in London. No verified, exact critical quotation about Power from a named critic in a major outlet could be confirmed for this profile, so none is reproduced here.

Power's market is built almost entirely on linocuts, an editioned, multiple medium rather than unique paintings, so results depend heavily on impression, edition number, and condition. A precise, verified all-time auction record could not be confirmed from primary auction-house sources. The best-documented public result identified is a 1920s linocut reported to have made GBP 51,000 at Fieldings Auctioneers in the UK, though the exact work, sale date, and premium terms were not independently verifiable. Bonhams has separately offered major linocuts such as The Eight and The Tube Station with pre-sale estimates in the GBP 30,000 to 60,000 range; these are estimates, not confirmed realized prices. There is no published catalogue raisonne, and no certificate-of-authenticity program; the specialist London dealers Osborne Samuel and Lyndsey Ingram, both of whom have mounted dedicated Power exhibitions in recent years, function as the closest thing to a market authority on his prints.

Because Power worked in editioned linocuts rather than unique paintings, collectors should expect that value depends significantly on impression quality, edition size, and paper condition rather than on a single per-artist price curve. With no catalogue raisonne in place, provenance and expert opinion from the small group of specialist Grosvenor School dealers carry unusual weight in establishing authenticity. Public sales are infrequent and a single confirmed all-time record could not be established from available sources, so the limited documented results, including a reported GBP 51,000 sale at Fieldings Auctioneers, should be read as data points rather than a stable trend line. His work's presence in major museum collections across three continents is the strongest signal of his lasting critical importance.