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Artist Paul Landacre American, 1893–1963

Date1940

Mediumwood engraving on cream wove paper

Dimensionsimage: 23.6 × 15.1 cm (9 5/16 × 5 15/16 in.)
sheet: 29.1 × 22.9 cm (11 7/16 × 9 in.)

ClassificationsPrints

Credit LineAnonymous Gift

Terms

Object number1987.58

Label TextPaul Landacre (1893-1963)

Though a relief process like woodcuts, wood engravings use burins, tools associated with intaglio engravings, rather than the chisels used to make woodcuts. Further, wood engravings use hard end-grain wood as opposed to the softer woods used in woodcuts. The harder wood allows for finer incisions thereby creating greater detail. However, like a woodcut, the impression results from those areas that are not cut away.

Wood engraving mostly declined into a commercial medium for book and newspaper illustration in the nineteenth-century. Paul Landacre resurrected the technique producing white-line wood engravings. Instead of having black lines on a white background, Landacre’s works appear as white images on a black background. The unsigned print with the estate stamp shows slight variation from the signed version on the warmer cream-colored paper. In the final, editioned version, there are additional highlights on the figure’s torso along with cross-hatching added in the area immediately surrounding her body.
ProvenanceAnonymous Gift

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