From the 1860s into the 1880s, Homer produced finely crafted
wood engravings for the pictorial press, including publications such as Harper's Weekly, Ballou's Pictorial, and Appleton's Journal, among others.
Northern Print is running a number of
wood engraving workshops for the duration of the exhibition:
Wood Engraving (suitable for beginners) will run on Saturday, January 31, from 10am-5pm.
His wide-ranging work includes lithographs, watercolours and many outstanding designs for symbols, posters,
wood engraving and murals.
After a period as an apprentice engraver, probably with his father, he moved to London in 1827 to study
wood engraving and the work of famous artists of the period.
The definitive small-scale English medium of printmaking is the
wood engraving, and there are many excellent examples of this on-going tradition from Monica Poole, Colin See-Paynton, Ian Stephens and others.
With the exception of Robert Cave's article on the Golden Cockerel Press, one would never know from this volume that in the twentieth century there was a revival in
wood engraving as found in the work of Noel Rooke, Robert Gibbings, Eric Gill, and many other craftsmen of the period.
The enraptured boy grew into a man who is regarded as the leading British exponent of the art of
wood engraving.
"It can be harking back to the likes of Thomas Bewick ( and we do have
wood engraving classes ( or using new media.
Nobody before had mastered
wood engraving like this genius.
Instead, he began to explore the new potential of
wood engraving. This was an old medium that, refitted, enabled the efficient printing of image and text together on the page--the origins of a large-scale illustrated press.
Various techniques are on show including etching, lithography, screenprinting,
wood engraving, woodcut and linocut.
The birthplace of the father of
wood engraving is the scene for a series of festivities across Saturday and Sunday.