|
|
|
 |
January 2008 |
British Birds: Vol 1, Land Birds, page 287
|
|
Thomas Bewick was born at Cherryburn House,
Eltringham, Northumberland in August of 1753, the eldest of eight children.
Early on he demonstrated a talent for art by drawing on the hearthstones
of his family home and filling the margins of his school books with pencil
sketches of the surrounding flora and fauna. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed
to Newcastle engraver Ralph Beilby. Most of the work of the shop was in
metal engraving, but occasionally there was work in woodcuts, especially
for children's books. Bewick worked primarily in metal at the shop during
the day, but he enjoyed working in wood and spent long evenings at home
making woodcuts and perfecting his technique.
|
| Click on an image for a larger view. |
|
For more Bewick woodcuts... |
Traditionally, in woodcutting it is the white
areas that are cut away leaving the black lines on the surface to take the
ink. Bewick, however, imagined the image in white as he engraved freehand,
rather than following a previously drawn image on the block. This 'white
line technique', combined with Bewick's eye for natural details formed the
basis of his mastery. He developed a method of slightly lowering the surface
of some areas of the block to achieve more of a grey tone, giving the effect
of distance, and thereby transforming a simple art into the most popular
form of graphic art in Britain until the introduction of photography in
the mid-19th century.
|
 |
|
 |
| Select Fables..., page 251 |
|
Select Fables..., page 325 |
Bewick's technique also involved engraving the end, rather than the length,
of the close-grained boxwood. It was a more delicate and intricate technique
and could achieve greater detail than metal engraving. Large boxwood blocks
were expensive so he used small blocks, rarely more than four inches across.
These small images, often only an inch and a half square or two by three
inches, are packed with immense detail.
|
 |
|
 |
| British Birds: Vol 1, Land Birds, page 180 |
|
Select Fables..., page 232 |
 |
| Thomas Bewick, 1972, Plate 9 "The Newfoundland Dog from the Quadrupeds" |
They delineate rural scenes often with animals
or birds surrounded by a lively landscape. It is in these detailed landscapes
found in Bewick's "tailpieces" (vignettes used to fill the blank
spaces at the end of a page), that his well known sense of humor and social
conscience emerge.
|
 |
|
 |
Thomas Bewick, 1972,
Plate 1 "A vignette from the Land Birds"
|
|
Thomas Bewick, 1972,
Plate 4 "A vignette from the Water Birds" |
Bewick's reputation was established in the last
decade of the 18th century with the publication of A General History
of Quadrupeds and A History of British Birds. Both of these works
drew on Bewick's love of nature, acquired as a child in his northern English
countryside. He had been producing wood engravings for some years before
the publication of Quadrupeds and British Birds. It was not
until the appearance of these works, and particularly the latter, that his
engravings caught the eye of the public and began the woodcut revival that
was to last throughout the 19th century, completely supplanting copperplate
engraving as the chief medium of book illustration.
|
 |
|
 |
| A General History of Quadrupeds, 1792, page 363 |
|
A General History of Quadrupeds, 1790, page 192 |
 |
|
 |
| A General History of Quadrupeds, 1792, page 479 |
|
British Birds: Vol 2, Water Birds, page 32 |
 |
|
 |
| British Birds: Vol 2, Water Birds, page 168 |
|
British Birds: Vol 2, Water Birds, page 4 |
|
|
 |
| Thomas Bewick Porfolio, 1945, Plate 10 "Redbreast" |
|
Thomas Bewick Porfolio, 1945, Plate 8 "Shepherd's Dog" |
When John James Audubon came to England in 1827, seeking
paying subscribers for his series of folios of American bird paintings,
he traveled to Newcastle to pay his respects to the aging Thomas Bewick.
Audubon described Bewick thusly, "My opinion of this remarkable man
is, that he was purely a son of nature, to whom alone he owed nearly all
that characterized him as an artist and a man. Warm in his affections,
of deep feeling, and possessed of a vigorous imagination, with correct
and penetrating observation, he needed little extraneous aid to make him
what he became, the first engraver on wood that England has produced.
Look at his tailpieces, reader, and say if you ever saw so much life represented
before..." Jenny Uglow, Nature's Engraver :
A Life of Thomas Bewick (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006),
309.
|
 |
In the Ingalls Library's copy of British Birds Volume 1, there is
an inscription that reads "Mr. Bewick was an eccentric character. He
used to sleep with his head on the sill of the chamber window, for the benefit
of the air." This inscription is believed to have been written by Mr.
William Allan (1796 - 1879) of Blackwell Grange, Darlington, relative and
subsequent heir to Mr. George Allan (1736 - 1800). George Allan, a noted
antiquary and natural history collector, was a contemporary of Thomas Bewick.
It is known that Bewick stayed at Blackwell Grange around 1797 and even
borrowed some books (possibly Thomas Pennant's British Zoology) from
the estate.
|
|
