Bewick Society member Robert Jones has lots of his popular Bewick Cards still available for sale.

Favourably priced at £9 for a set of 18, postage extra.

Contact Robert at crackcancer@hotmail.com

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Francis Nicholson, 18th C Lithographs Evening Talk
Ryedale Folk Museum
Thursday 17th May
7-8.30pm.
Cost per person: £6.00

Hailed by his contemporaries as the“Father of watercolour painting in this country”, Francis Nicholson’s career spanned nine decades. He witnessed the founding of the Royal Academy, the opening of the first public ‘Picture Gallery’, the founding of the National Gallery, and the Inaugural Exhibition of the Society of Painters in Watercolours of which he was a founder member. He was born in Pickering, North Yorkshire in 1753 and for some fifty years painted portraits and scenes mainly in the northern counties. After moving his family to London, he became a fashionable drawing master and an early innovator in the newly discovered medium of “lithography”- the art of making prints from drawings on stone. To celebrate the bicentenary of his Presidency of the Society, a ‘Nicholson Group’ was formed in the town of his birth to recognise his achievements and to mount an exhibition of his work.
Professor Gordon Bell, Guest Curator of this exhibition at The Art Gallery, Ryedale Folk Museum will give an illustrated talk about the “Father of watercolour painting in this country”, Francis Nicholson’s life. This will be followed by a guided tour of rarely seen watercolours, prints and drawings by a remarkable man and his three children and nephew, all of whom were artists

Pre-booking essential

The exhibition "F. Nicholson, Painter, Printmaker, Drawing Master" continues until 20th May

Ryedale Folk Museum
Hutton le Hole
York
YO62 6UA

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Doctor Keith Armstrong presents:

‘Men of the North’ (part of Local History Month)

From poet John Cunningham to wood engraver Thomas Bewick, political agitator and poet Tom Spence, painter John Martin to writer Jack Common - their stories told by Dr Keith Armstrong aka The Jingling Geordie who also performs his own poems dedicated to this splendid array of local talent.

Thursday 17th May 2011  6.30-7.30pm 

Bewick Hall, Newcastle City Library

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Thanks to Alan Sykes on the Northerner Blog of the Guardian for his excellent piece on Bewick in Gateshead.

"In a much quieter way, he could be as acute and as eloquent a critic of human brutality as Goya. Many of his works touch on cruelty to children or animals, and, living through the Napoleonic wars, he was an early proponent of pacifism – as he put it

"I had reasoned myself into a detestation of war, its cruelty, its horrors, and the superlative wickedness of the authors of it… It is foreign to my purpose to enlarge upon this subject: I must leave that to others; and there is an abundant scope to dilate upon, and to depicture, the horrors of war in their true colours.""

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More details here http://lmorrisxstitch.blogspot.co.uk/
and
https://online.gateshead.gov.uk/EventTicketsOnline/pages/eventdetails.aspx?ky...

See the full gallery on Posterous

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THOMAS BEWICK IN GATESHEAD
A lecture by Dr. Peter Quinn
Two hundred years ago, in 1812, Thomas Bewick and his family moved from Newcastle
to Gateshead. The engraver bought a large west-facing house with garden in Mirk Place,
later known as 19 West Street. The lecture will explore the significance of Gateshead in
Bewick’s life and work.
From his work-room in Gateshead Bewick completed his last
published works. He also welcomed many admirers, among them the American artist
John James Audubon. It was from their base in Gateshead that his daughters guarded and
shaped the Bewick legacy late into the nineteenth century.

Date and time: Friday 4 May at 11am
Venue: Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead

(Illustration from The Fables of Aesop, published 1818)

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Bewick in Gateshead
An exhibition looking at the work of Thomas Bewick and those who followed in his footsteps.

2012 marks the 200th anniversary of Thomas Bewick’s move to 19 West Street in Gateshead.
Examples of his much loved work will be on display, illustrating the breadth of his work and his capacity to incorporate domestic life into his engravings. Throughout the month of May there will be Blackwork demonstrations by Linda Morris championing the images from Bewick – there are also activities for families to enjoy based around techniques used by Bewick.

The Exhibition is launched on Tuesday 1st of May and runs through until the end of the month.
The exhibition is FREE and available to view during normal opening hours

St. Mary’s Heritage Centre
Oakwellgate, Gateshead, NE8 2AU
Tel: 0191 433 4699 Email: heritage@gateshead.gov.uk

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Free guided tours of The Lit& Phil

The next dates available for Free guided tours of The Lit and Phil:

Monday 14th May at 11am
Tuesday 15th May at 2pm
Wednesday 16th May at 11am
Thursday 17th May at 3pm
Friday 18th May at 2pm

Free, open to all. Pre-booking is essential however. To book contact the Lit and phil directly on 0191 232 0192.
The Lit& Phil is registered in England as a company, number: 6220953,
and as an Educational Charity, number 1120948.

Literary and Philosophical Society
23 Westgate Road, Newcastle Upon Tyne. NE1 1SE

Telephone: 0191 232 0192

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Linda Morris is demonstrating blackwork using examples of Thomas Bewick's prints  for interpretation purposes on the following dates:

Apr. 29 - Cherryburn

May 1, 12, 19, 20, 26 & 27 - St. Mary's Heritage Centre, Gateshead

She writes
"I will be interpreting Thomas Bewick's prints in blackwork, primarily through textile postcards that I have designed based on his work. I am looking forward to this opportunity as I've always felt that much of his work would lend itself well to this medium."
http://lmorrisxstitch.blogspot.co.uk/

There are several Bewick events in Gateshead this May to celebrate 200 years since Bewick moved to the town. More details on their website, click here.

Above: Tale-piece VANITAS VANITATUM OMNIA VANITAS, British Birds vol 1 1797 p.202

“Old age and heedless youth. The background to the left is a view of the ruins of the Chapel (Roman Catholic) once belonging it is said to the Riddells – I remember part of the mansion also in ruins - The Chapel was set fire to by the mob – when Butcher Willy [Cumberland] led his troops thro’ Newcastle to Culloden. ” Jane Bewick Ms notes.

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Thomas Bewick features in this review on the Quietus website.
Luke Turner visited the AV Festival in Newcastle and Gateshead.
"Meeting On The Desertshore: Sleazy Remembered At AV Festival"
http://thequietus.com/articles/08308-av-festival-throbbing-gristle-desertshore-review

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RM Healey's review of Nigel Tattersfield's "The Complete Illustrative Work" appears on the website of the BBRC

" Nigel Tattersfield, whose three magnificent volumes are a monumental survey of Bewick’s full range of work, as artist, craftsman and commercial publisher, focuses his attention on the way in which Bewick’s success was largely due to his business instincts. While Donovan’s large-format and lavishly illustrated £15 ten-volume edition of hand-coloured plates sold slowly and made little money, Bewick knew that, at a time of war shortages and financial crises, a two-volume book costing a mere guinea (the equivalent of £1.05) was bound to do well. Not only was Bewick’s British Birds small enough to accompany the nature lover in the field, it was also likely to appeal to those who were more attracted by the artist’s commitment to the tradition of British woodblock printing, which he developed to a sublime degree."
http://www.britishbirds.co.uk/book-reviews/thomas-bewick-the-complete-illustrative-work-by-nigel-tattersfield

Those of you without a copy may like to buy one through the link on the BBRC website.

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The current Tate Britain exhibition “The Romantics” includes “Zebra, Illustration to General History of Quadrupeds, published, 1790”.  But the Tate Zebra is far larger than the book’s, and furthermore it is referred to, slightly oddly, as “Relief Print” rather than ‘wood engraving’.  What is this displayed print?

Consulting Nigel Tattersfield’s recent work [THOMAS BEWICK The Complete Illustrative Work, The British Library, The Bibliographical Society, Oak Knoll Press 3 vols] we find three Zebras. The Zebra of the General History of Quadrupeds 1790  [TB1.1] is accompanied by a text full of “Romantic” flourish: the animal was viewed as “untameable”. A smaller Zebra appears in The Young Reader 1806 [TB2.686.] The Tate’s Zebra however is undoubtedly from Gilbert Pidcock’s Brief Description of the Principal Foreign Animals 1800 (Tattersfield TB2.53) The Zebra is reproduced on p.120 of vol 2 of Tattersfield. We’ve alerted the Tate curators to the slip.

Returning to the exhibition, in the nearby section of “Word and Image” there is alas no Bewick when in fact the combination was pioneered by him in the vignettes.  Those exhibited are sketch notes by Constable and others, which is hardly ‘word and image’ in a finished work of art as in, for example, Bewick’s “This Stone”.

But why is Bewick’s Zebra in an exhibition of Romanticism at all?  Although his position in regard to the movement can be debated, his drawing in the quadrupeds remained more classical.  Is it perhaps because Neo-Romantic artists sometimes included zebras in their work?  The Christopher Wood currently on display in the British Galleries does so, and his animal is close enough to Bewick’s to encourage us to wonder whether he did not copy it from him, especially because of the revived interest in Bewick in Wood’s time.

The Tate Romantics exhibition continues until 3^rd June 2012.
Details here http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/romantics/default.shtm

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Cherryburn

Welcome Back Bewick Day!

Help the National Trust open up Thomas Bewick's birthplace after the winter with printing demonstrations, family printing and an 'In Bewick's Footsteps' walk (12 pm).

More Information: Cherryburn enquiries, 01207 541820, cherryburn@nationaltrust.org.uk
Details on the Cherryburn website http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/cherryburn/

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"It is admittedly a time of experiment. We have to rediscover the best way of doing things - the best tools, the best methods, the best aims." Eric Gill, 1927

This exhibition celebrates the very generous donation by the Society of Wood Engravers (SWE) of their archive to the Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections. The archive includes material from the Society's foundation in 1920 and traces its development up to the present day.

16th January 2012 - 23rd March 2012

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Chris Wormell on Bewick, wood-block printing and natural history illustration today.

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This exhibition has been developed by Dr Joan Heggie, who has been researching the artist's life for several years and is currently compiling a catalogue of Talbot's work.

Included in this exhibition are the 'Steel Making' prints, probably created in the late 1930s or early 1940s, which illustrate in incredible detail the various process required to make steel.

Other prints reflect Talbot's passion for travel during the 1920s and 30s across Europe and to the West Indies, using the woodblock print as the medium for recording many of the sights she saw when abroad.

Viva Talbot's childhood and marital homes were in Yorkshire and some of the prints on display are of rural scenes and townscapes from around the county she loved.

Viva Talbot (1900-1983) created hundreds of woodblock prints during her lifetime, including the Steel Making series, but is not recognised within the reference books of 20th century British printmakers.

The exhibition will be held in Constantine Gallery, Middlesbrough Tower  full details here: http://www.tees.ac.uk/sections/whats_on/events_details.cfm?event_id=4405

A public lecture about Viva Talbot will also be given by Dr Heggie on 19 March.
Details can be found on the University of Teeside website http://www.tees.ac.uk/sections/staff/events_details.cfm?event_id=4411

See the full gallery on Posterous

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from an audio recording of Bewick’s Memoir by Bob Browell.

Bewick wrote his Memoir at the age of seventy-five so that his children, and especially his daughter Jane, should come to know more of their family history.

 Bob Browell (1928-2009) was latterly a volunteer at Cherryburn, a lecturer on Thomas Bewick and a talented artist. You can read about his life and times here http://www.bewicksociety.org/cherryburn_times/pdfs/CT%20Summer%202010jk%20ema...

This is the first of eleven passages read from the Memoir which appeared on a cassette tape in the late 1980s.

Chapter_One,_Bewick_at_Tynemouth.mp3 Listen on Posterous

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Thomas Bewick illustrated the works of Burns for William Davison and John Catnach of Alnwick.This was a Bewick workshop production. (Iain Bain, Note on Bewick’s Engraving, p265 Memoir) The John Thurston designs were engraved by Henry White. “Many of the tail-pieces were from the hands of Isaac Nicholson and Edward Willis as well as their colleague White” “But they were of the workshop and nothing would have gone out without the check and guidance of its proprietor.”

The editions are numbered TB 2.500A, 500B and 500C by Nigel Tattersfield.

The poetical works of Robert Burns with his life
Vols 1 and 2: Engravings on Wood by Bewick from designs by Thurston. Alnwick, Catnach and Davison in 1808.
The poetical works of Robert Burns with his life
Vols 1 and 2: Engravings and tail pieces illustrating Burns's poems. Published in Alnwick by William Davison in 1808 and 1812

Robert Burns visited Newcastle in 1787: you can read about the trip here http://community.newcastle.gov.uk/libraries/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Robert-Burns-in-Newcastle.pdf

He did not meet Thomas Bewick.
"Sleep at Morpeth, a pleasant enough little town, and on next day to Newcastle. Meet with a very agreeable sensible fellow, a Mr. Chattox, who shows us a great many civilities, and who dines and sups with us." [Burns Letters]

This may have been William Chatto (died 1804) the father of William Andrew Chatto,  [pseud. Stephen Oliver] (1799–1864). Tea-dealer William Andrew became an important historian of wood-engraving. His Treatise on Wood Engraving, Historical and Practical (1839) included 300 illustrations by John Jackson. John Jackson (1801-48) had been an apprentice in the Bewick workshop.

You can read about Bewick's trips to Scotland and his enthusiasm for all things Scottish here http://www.bewicksociety.org/cherryburn_times/pdfs/CT%20Summer%202009%20NV-email.pdf

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Blogger Larry Thompson of Merrickville, Ontario, Canada writes about the challenges of wood engraving in the manner of Thomas Bewick.
http://greyweathers.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/wood-engraving-for-tintern-abbey...

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Bankside Gallery, Open daily from 11am - 6pm during exhibitions  Admission Free
48 Hopton Street, London, SE1 9JH
020 7928 7521
http://banksidegallery.com/viewexhibition.aspx?exhibitionid=44

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