DOI article:
Finberg, Alexander Joseph: The wood-cuts of T. Sturge Moore
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21214#0039
The Wood-Cuts of T. St urge Moore
but an exceptionally
well-read and well-
educated person.
I do not think any
of us took Moore’s
artistic studies very
seriously. He was
what is called
“clumsy-fisted.” He
never seemed able
to put a touch ex-
actly where he
wanted it to go. His
drawings and paint-
ings always lacked
delicacy and finish.
They had that kind
of childish uncouth-
ness which we now
associate with the
term Post-Impressionism. When we heard that
several of Moore’s poems had earned the approval
of Ricketts, who was as hard to please in literary
as in artistic matters, we assumed that Moore would
devote himself mainly to a literary life and that he
would soon abandon the graphic arts for which we
thought he was not naturally adapted.
We were right in thinking that he' would
achieve literary distinction—he is now
a Fellow of the Royal Society of
Literature, his poems, like “ The Rout
°f the Amazons ” and/_“ The Vine-
dresser,” have placed him in the first
rank of living English poets, and his
critical studies of the works of Dtirer,
Correggio, and William Blake stand
out conspicuously, as Mr. Laurence
Binyon has well said, from the current
criticism of art by their penetrative
power and grasp of fundamental ideas ;
but we were quite wrong in thinking
that Moore would not also achieve
distinction as an artist. We were mis-
taken because we overvalued manual
dexterity and accomplishment as most
students and nearly all artists always
do, and we took too little account of
the pure]y intellectual and imaginative
S1de of creative art.
The wood-engraving' class at Lam-
beth was intended to train students in
the work of reproductive engraving.
Ricketts, with an intuitive sense of
the innate possibilities of every medium
he worked in which amounted to genius, was the first
to rebel against this subordination of engraving to re-
productive and commercial purposes. He was the
first in our generation to see that wood-engraving
could stand in its own right as an independent
medium of artistic expression ; that it might be as
autonomous as oil or water-colour painting or
etching, provided that the designer and engraver
should work in the terms of their own art, and not
in those of any of its friendly or inimical neigh-
bours. He saw clearly the advantages of com-
bining the designer and engraver in one person,
so that the design should be conceived from the
first in terms of the wood-block, and that the wood-
cutter should be sufficiently intimate with the
designer’s mind and intentions to work freely
within the capacities of his medium. It is true
that neither Dtirer, Holbein, Titian nor Rubens,
and, to come down to more recent times, neither
Rossetti, Millais, nor Sandys, had cut their own
blocks. But sufficient had been done in this direc-
tion by Blake, Calvert, and Bewick to confirm
Ricketts in his idea that the most perfect artistic
conditions were that the engraver should make his
own designs, and that the designer should be his own
engraver. But such ideas were heretical to the editors
TAILPIECE. DE-
SIGNED AND EN-
GRAVED BY T.
STURGE MOORE
but an exceptionally
well-read and well-
educated person.
I do not think any
of us took Moore’s
artistic studies very
seriously. He was
what is called
“clumsy-fisted.” He
never seemed able
to put a touch ex-
actly where he
wanted it to go. His
drawings and paint-
ings always lacked
delicacy and finish.
They had that kind
of childish uncouth-
ness which we now
associate with the
term Post-Impressionism. When we heard that
several of Moore’s poems had earned the approval
of Ricketts, who was as hard to please in literary
as in artistic matters, we assumed that Moore would
devote himself mainly to a literary life and that he
would soon abandon the graphic arts for which we
thought he was not naturally adapted.
We were right in thinking that he' would
achieve literary distinction—he is now
a Fellow of the Royal Society of
Literature, his poems, like “ The Rout
°f the Amazons ” and/_“ The Vine-
dresser,” have placed him in the first
rank of living English poets, and his
critical studies of the works of Dtirer,
Correggio, and William Blake stand
out conspicuously, as Mr. Laurence
Binyon has well said, from the current
criticism of art by their penetrative
power and grasp of fundamental ideas ;
but we were quite wrong in thinking
that Moore would not also achieve
distinction as an artist. We were mis-
taken because we overvalued manual
dexterity and accomplishment as most
students and nearly all artists always
do, and we took too little account of
the pure]y intellectual and imaginative
S1de of creative art.
The wood-engraving' class at Lam-
beth was intended to train students in
the work of reproductive engraving.
Ricketts, with an intuitive sense of
the innate possibilities of every medium
he worked in which amounted to genius, was the first
to rebel against this subordination of engraving to re-
productive and commercial purposes. He was the
first in our generation to see that wood-engraving
could stand in its own right as an independent
medium of artistic expression ; that it might be as
autonomous as oil or water-colour painting or
etching, provided that the designer and engraver
should work in the terms of their own art, and not
in those of any of its friendly or inimical neigh-
bours. He saw clearly the advantages of com-
bining the designer and engraver in one person,
so that the design should be conceived from the
first in terms of the wood-block, and that the wood-
cutter should be sufficiently intimate with the
designer’s mind and intentions to work freely
within the capacities of his medium. It is true
that neither Dtirer, Holbein, Titian nor Rubens,
and, to come down to more recent times, neither
Rossetti, Millais, nor Sandys, had cut their own
blocks. But sufficient had been done in this direc-
tion by Blake, Calvert, and Bewick to confirm
Ricketts in his idea that the most perfect artistic
conditions were that the engraver should make his
own designs, and that the designer should be his own
engraver. But such ideas were heretical to the editors
TAILPIECE. DE-
SIGNED AND EN-
GRAVED BY T.
STURGE MOORE