DOI article:
Finberg, Alexander Joseph: The wood-cuts of T. Sturge Moore
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21214#0036
The IVood-Cuts of T. St urge Moore
In addition to the classes for painting and
drawing, a class for wood-engraving was conducted
by Mr. Charles Roberts, an engraver whose work
often appeared in the “ Graphic ” and “ Illustrated
London News ” of those days. Moore, as well as
Ricketts, Shannon, Raven-Hill, and Townsend,
worked in this class. Ricketts was certainly the
most intellectually precocious of all the students;
he had, even in those days, a wonderful knowledge
of all the various forms of art: he had travelled
more than any of us, had read more, and was
familiar not only with the works of the older
masters but also with those of the modern Con-
tinental artists. Moore, like the rest of us, soon
came under the influence of Ricketts’s dominant
personality, and I think he paid much more atten-
tion to Ricketts’s criticisms and suggestions than to
those of any of the masters.
Though we nearly all admired Ricketts, we
feared him, I think, still more, for he had a bitter
tongue and a capricious temper. On the other
hand we had a real liking for Moore: he was so
modest, simple-minded and straightforward. I
“ PEAD-D'ANE BATHING '’ DESIGNED AND ENGRAVED BY
T. STURGE MOORE
still remember the quiet and quaint little smile
with which he told me, after I had been admiring
one of his poems, that he couldn’t spell, that he
didn’t know anything about grammar, and that in
fact he was quite uneducated. I was surprised at
3°
this confession, because I knew that his brother
was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and
that his sisters had had unusually distinguished
academic careers. But Moore explained with his
usual directness and simplicity that he was the
“THE YOUNG MOTHER.” DESIGNED AND
ENGRAVED BY T. STURGE MOORE
stupid one of the family, and that the family
council had decided that the educational ad-
vantages to which his brothers and sisters were
properly entitled would have been wasted on
him. That was why, he added, he was allowed
to go to an art school to amuse himself, and
encouraged to try to learn wood-engraving.
As a matter of fact Moore, even at that time,
was quite as well educated as the majority of
his fellow art-students, but he knew, from the
experience of his brothers and sisters, what a
thorough-going academic education meant, and
he realised his own deficiencies better than we
realised our own. And, I may add, he has since
done everything in his power to remedy any initial
shortcomings by sedulous and systematic reading.
No reader of his searching studies of Flaubert’s
and Blake’s works could regard him as anything
In addition to the classes for painting and
drawing, a class for wood-engraving was conducted
by Mr. Charles Roberts, an engraver whose work
often appeared in the “ Graphic ” and “ Illustrated
London News ” of those days. Moore, as well as
Ricketts, Shannon, Raven-Hill, and Townsend,
worked in this class. Ricketts was certainly the
most intellectually precocious of all the students;
he had, even in those days, a wonderful knowledge
of all the various forms of art: he had travelled
more than any of us, had read more, and was
familiar not only with the works of the older
masters but also with those of the modern Con-
tinental artists. Moore, like the rest of us, soon
came under the influence of Ricketts’s dominant
personality, and I think he paid much more atten-
tion to Ricketts’s criticisms and suggestions than to
those of any of the masters.
Though we nearly all admired Ricketts, we
feared him, I think, still more, for he had a bitter
tongue and a capricious temper. On the other
hand we had a real liking for Moore: he was so
modest, simple-minded and straightforward. I
“ PEAD-D'ANE BATHING '’ DESIGNED AND ENGRAVED BY
T. STURGE MOORE
still remember the quiet and quaint little smile
with which he told me, after I had been admiring
one of his poems, that he couldn’t spell, that he
didn’t know anything about grammar, and that in
fact he was quite uneducated. I was surprised at
3°
this confession, because I knew that his brother
was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and
that his sisters had had unusually distinguished
academic careers. But Moore explained with his
usual directness and simplicity that he was the
“THE YOUNG MOTHER.” DESIGNED AND
ENGRAVED BY T. STURGE MOORE
stupid one of the family, and that the family
council had decided that the educational ad-
vantages to which his brothers and sisters were
properly entitled would have been wasted on
him. That was why, he added, he was allowed
to go to an art school to amuse himself, and
encouraged to try to learn wood-engraving.
As a matter of fact Moore, even at that time,
was quite as well educated as the majority of
his fellow art-students, but he knew, from the
experience of his brothers and sisters, what a
thorough-going academic education meant, and
he realised his own deficiencies better than we
realised our own. And, I may add, he has since
done everything in his power to remedy any initial
shortcomings by sedulous and systematic reading.
No reader of his searching studies of Flaubert’s
and Blake’s works could regard him as anything