Many artists break into
the rarefied world of stamp engraving because they have been tutored by the
best of the previous generation. Very few manage to force their way to the
attention of postal authorities and security printers as unknown quantities. An
exception to the rule, however, was Bohumil Heinz, who engraved issues for his
native Czechoslovakia after demonstrating his talents on stamps of the British
Empire.
Heinz (1894-1940) was
born in Rakovnik, west of Prague, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire
and is now the Czech Republic, on 9 May 1894. Having shown an artistic talent
from a young age, he attended the School of Ceramics in Bechyne, but had to cut
his studies short to fight on both the Russian and Italian fronts during World
War I. After the war, he attended the School of Applied Arts in Prague. He started off with figurative painting, but
later moved on to engraving, being taught by Professor Eduard Karel.
In 1924, he left school
as he had to provide for his family, and could not afford to dabble in
engraving. Heinz eked out a living as a designer of advertisements and posters.
He dreamed of becoming a professional engraver, but he could not afford the
training. All he could do was hone his skills by engraving portraits in his
spare time. He applied for a job as a
banknote engraver at the Czechoslovakian National Bank, but was rejected
because he was a complete unknown.
His work did get
noticed by some of the elite engravers of the day, and Ferdinand Schirnböck
invited him to work with him in Vienna, but unfortunately Schirnböck died
before this came to anything. Heinz’s luck finally changed in 1932, when the
London printer De La Rue gave him the opportunity to complete a test engraving,
a portrait of King Pradjadhipok of Siam. As a result he was offered a permanent
position, but he did not want to move away from home so he accepted work as a
freelancer.
Over the following
years Heinz produced some 30 engravings for the British company. Attributing
work to specific engravers at De La Rue is usually hard, but in the case of
Heinz it has been possible to compile an
authoritative list. Heinz sometimes hid his initials in the engravings he made,
and these sometimes went undetected. But even better: after Heinz had passed
away, various dies were found in his estate of engravings done for De La Rue.
‘Proofs’ were pulled from these dies and these were backstamped ‘zkusmy tisk’
(trial printing) and with a signature which looks like Heinz’s but isn’t.
The list
starts with a portrait of Ch’en Ying-shih for three values in China’s Martyrs
of the revolution series, introduced in 1933, and continued with a profile head
of King George V which was used on definitives for Ceylon, Nigeria and St
Lucia. Heinz also engraved a profile head of the king’s successor, King Edward
VIII, but that was never used on a stamp, because of the king’s reign being
rather short.
Heinz was
also responsible for the vignettes of two of the designs in Sudan’s 1935 issue
marking the 50th anniversary of the death of General Charles Gordon: a portrait
for the low values and an illustration of the memorial service in Khartoum for
the higher values (where he surreptitiously inscribed his name on the trunk of
a tree). Research by Brian Livingstone,
published in Geosix, the journal of the King George VI Collectors’ Society, has
shown that Heinz also engraved one of the profile heads of that king used by De
La Rue for various definitive issues.
The proofs
of this particular head are in a rectangular stamp-size format, which probably
has led to them usually being attributed as unadopted stamp essays. These
proofs show the H for Heinz hidden in the king’s ear. Comparison with the De La
Rue profiles used has shown that this head was used for the 1938 definitive set
issued in Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika.
It appears
on all values except the 15c and 2s. The head was only used for one other
stamp; the 1s definitive issued in St Lucia, also in 1938. The proof with H in
the king’s ear is another posthumous proof. The actual De La Rue proofs made at
the time of stamp production appear to show that the H was discovered and first
partly removed, while on the eventual stamps, the H has disappeared completely.
His final work for De La Rue was a portrait of King Charles I, which appeared
in the 1939 Barbados set commemorating the Tercentenary of the General
Assembly.
In his home
country, Heinz’s breakthrough came in 1934. He had been submitting essays
before then, but they had always been rejected in favour of other engravers.
Most famously, in 1934 Heinz decided to engrave a postage stamp essay for the
upcoming commemoration of the fiftieth death anniversary of the composer
Bedrich Smetana, only to be told when submitting it that the job had been given
to the engraver Karl Seizinger just the week before.
Heinz's
version of the Smetana stamp was thought to be of such good quality, though,
that he finally got the offer to engrave an issue commemorating another
Czechoslovakian composer, Antonin Dvorak. For someone with a passion for
classical music, this was an ideal commission.
The stamp
received great praise, and Heinz had finally made his name in his homeland. Heinz
himself was more critical of his first work for Czechoslovakia, and especially
lamented the printing with rotary presses, believing that the process of flat
printing was more suited for retaining the nuances of the original engraving.
Heinz's breakthrough at
home meant he could move to a larger place. Since 1928, he and his wife had
lived in a tiny apartment in Prague, where there was so little room that Heinz
had to engrave in the kitchen. But in
1934, the family could move to a larger place where Heinz would have his own
room. After Czechoslovakia was invaded by Germany in 1939,
Heinz found himself obliged to work for the occupying forces, creating a number
of stamps for the Protectorate of Bohemia & Moravia.
Patriotically,
and rather bravely, he hid the letters ‘D’, ‘r’ and ‘B’ in his engravings of
the 50h, 1k and 1k20h values in the 1939 definitive series, noting his
allegiance to Dr Benes, Czechoslovakia’s president in exile. Furthermore, if
you arrange the 40h, 50h, 60h and 1k values in a certain way, the combination
of the images is said to show an outline of pre-war Czechoslovakia!
Ever more
fanciful, and maybe even a bit doubtful, is the alleged inclusion of caricature
portraits of Tomas Masaryk, Edvard Benes and General Stefanik, who are
considered the founding fathers of Czechoslovakia, on the 50h stamp. That same
stamp is supposed to have included a profile of Benes in the clouds to the left
of the tower.
Finally, the clouds on
the 1k value are supposed to include the outline of Czechoslovakia's patron
saint Wenceslas. All these patriotic messages were of course not reported until
after the Second World War. Heinz didn’t live to see
his country’s liberation, as he died in May 1940 from a cardiac arrest.
As a belated tribute, his Smetana essay of 1934 was used for a stamp issue in 1949. Heinz's work would appear on stamps even later than that. In 1953, his design of the Charles Bridge in Prague stamp was finally issued. Heinz had engraved it as well, but that was at a time when copper was still used to engrave on. In 1953, the transfer rollers in use would most probably destroy a copper engraving. Jaroslav Goldschmied was therefore asked to create a new engraving, in steel, but Heinz's name was still included in the bottom margin of the stamp.
You will find Bohumil Heinz's database HERE.