Stanley Anderson Prints: A Catalogue Raisonne

Despite living through some of the most dramatic changes of the twentieth century, Stanley Anderson CBE (1884-1966) created a vision of an essentially timeless English rural tradition in his etchings and woodcuts. His training was as an engraver, first on a heraldic engraving apprenticeship with his father and later at the Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths College, London. Anderson became a master of his craft: elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1923. When he later took up woodcutting, he became immersed in a technique that was considered as deeply English as the subjects he depicted. Anderson was a key figure in the revival of engraving in the 1920s. The techniques exacting craftsmanship, intimate scale and indelible sense of historicism were a stark contrast to the modernist explosion. This catalogue raisonne gathers together for the first time the complete uvre of Anderson's prints, from the townscapes of his early career to the fascinating twenty-year study of rural crafts, including hedge-laying, carpentry and barrel-making, that he carried out towards the end of his life, and for which he is best known.