Preparatory Drawing For "Yesterday"
Artist
Paul Landacre
(American, 1893–1963)
Dateabout 1940
Mediumgraphite on medium smooth off-white wove paper
Dimensionssheet: 35.7 x 24.9 cm (14 1/16 x 9 13/16 in.)
ClassificationsDrawings
Credit LineAnonymous Gift
Object number1987.55
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.
On View
Not on view
