Thomas Bewick & John Thurston

Thomas Bewick and John Thurston - The Seasons Complete Set of Eight Original Wood Engravings

The Seasons (The Complete Set of Eight Original Wood Engravings)

Thomas Bewick: A complete set of eight original wood engravings by Thomas Bewick - Britain's famous master of that art - The Seasons dates from 1805. For each of the four seasons Bewick engraved two illustrative scenes one as a frontis piece and the other as the tailpiece. The specific lines from the poem appear below each wood engraving and are given below. These beautiful and highly detailed engravings clearly exhibit Thomas Bewick's white-line technique which revolutionized the art of wood engraving.

James Thomson (1700-1748) completed his major opus in blank verse, The Seasons, in 1730. The Seasons introduced nature as a self-sufficient theme and became one of the most popular poems in English literature throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Various publications of the poem contained artistic interpretations, in original engraving and etching, of each of the four seasons. As The Seasons touched upon a great many elements of seasonal change, artists and engravers were at tremendous liberty to depict Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter according to their preferences. Thomas Bewick's engravings, designed by the British artist, John Thurston, mostly concentrate upon his greatest artistic passion, rural life and scenes of the English countryside.

The Complete Set of Eight Original Wood Engravings by Thomas Bewick designed by John Thurston .

The Seasons

View the Poems and Images for The Seasons by the British artist, Thomas Bewick.

Thomas Bewick (Newcastle upon Tyne (Ovingham), 1755 - 1828)
#	Click below to view larger Image	Title, Medium & Artist	Poem	Date
01-		The Seasons: Spring - Frontispiece (Boy Chasing a Rainbow) Original Wood Engraving by the British artist, Thomas Bewick designed by John Thurston.	………………………….Not so the boy; He wondering views the bright inchantment bend, Delightful, o'er the radiant fields, and runs To catch the falling glory; but amazed Beholds th'amusive arch before him fly, Then vanish quite away …………..	1805
02-		The Seasons: Spring - Tailpiece (The Lovers) Original Wood Engraving by the British artist, Thomas Bewick designed by John Thurston.	…………..and while the rosy footed May Steals blushing on, together lets us tread The morning dews, and gather in their prime Fresh blooming flowers, to grace thy braided hair, And thy lov'd bosom that improves their sweets.	1805
03-		The Seasons: Summer - Frontispiece (Damon and Musidora) Original Wood Engraving by the British artist, Thomas Bewick designed by John Thurston.	But when her Damon's well known hand she saw, Her terrors vanishish'd, and a softer train Of mixt emotions, hard to be described, Her sudden bosom seiz'd: ………………	1805
04.-		The Seasons: Summer - Tailpiece ('Love's Respectful Modesty') Original Wood Engraving by the British artist, Thomas Bewick designed by John Thurston.	…………………………..Check'd, at last, By love's respectful modesty, he deem'd The theft profane, if aught profane to love Can e'er be deem'd; and, struggling from the shade, With headlong hurry fled ………………..	1805
05.-		The Seasons: Autumn - Frontispiece (The Mother's Tale) Original Wood Engraving by the British artist, Thomas Bewick designed by John Thurston.	Or when the mournful tale her mother told, Of what her faithless fortune promis'd once, Thrill'd in her thought, they, like the dewy star Of evening, shone in tears …………	1805
06.-		The Seasons: Autumn - Tailpiece (The Doctor) Original Wood Engraving by the British artist, Thomas Bewick designed by John Thurston.	Perhaps some doctor, of tremendous paunch, Awful and deep, a black abyss of drink, Outlives them all; and from his buried flock Retiring, full of rumination sad, Laments the weakness of these latter times.	1805
07.-		The Seasons: Winter - Frontispiece (A Lost Man) Original Wood Engraving by the British artist, Thomas Bewick designed by John Thurston.	…………………………….but wanders on From hill to dale, still more and more astray: Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps, Stung with the thoughts of home ……………	1805
08.-		The Seasons: Winter - Tailpiece (Wolves at the Door) Original Wood Engraving by the British artist, Thomas Bewick designed by John Thurston.	Rapacious, at the mother's throat they fly, And tear the screaming infant from her breast. The godlike face of man avails him nought.	1805

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Title:	The Seasons (The Complete Set of Eight Original Wood Engravings)
Engraver:	Bewick, Thomas (Newcastle upon Tyne (Ovingham), 1755 - 1828)
Designer:	Thurston, John (Scarborough, 1774 - London, 1822)
Date:	1805
Medium:	The Complete Set of Eight Original Wood Engravings
Publisher:	James Wallis, London
Note:	Thomas Bewick: England's famous father of wood engraving, Thomas Bewick was apprenticed to the etcher and engraver, Ralph Beilby, at the age of fourteen. He achieved considerable recognition in 1775 when his engravings for an edition of Gay's Fables was awarded a prize from the Society of Arts. Such masterworks of the illustrated book as A General History of Quadrupeds (1790), A History of British Birds (1797 & 1804), Poems by Goldsmith and Parnell (1795), Select Fables (1784), and Aesop's Fables (1818), followed. Rarely straying far from his birthplace Thomas Bewick established Newcastle as the centre of wood engraving. His work was carried on by his pupils John Bewick (his brother), Robert Eliot Bewick (his son), Luke Clennel, William Harvey and Robert Johnson.
	Thomas Bewick's influence upon the course of modern wood engraving cannot be overstated. Harold Osborne writes, "Bewick arrested the decline of engraving into a primarily reproductive technique and brought to it new expressive possibilities, reviving the white-line method. …. He has been called the father of modern wood engraving and although his books were popular in his own day, his reputation has stood higher since the third decade of the 20th c. not only as a technician but as an artist. The particular quality in which his work excelled was what he called 'colour', a combination of tone and texture which, together with his fine sense of design and his keen observation, have made him outstanding among English graphic artists. *
	John Thurston: A watercolourist and illustrator John Thurston was elected an Associate of the Water-Colour Society in 1805. Most of his career centred upon the illustrated book and he supplied the designs for such works as Bloomfield's Rural Tales (1802), Thomson's The Seasons (1805), Burns's Poems (1808), Shakespeare's Works (1814) and Falconer's Shipwreck. Thurston's watercolours and drawings were exhibited at both the Water-Colour Society and at the Royal Academy.
Reference:	* (For Thomas Bewick) Harold Osborne, ed., The Oxford Companion to Art, Oxford University Press, 1970, pp. 132 - 134 Quotation on p. 133.
Size:	8 3/4 X 5 1/4 (Sizes in inches are approximate, height preceding width of paper.)
	Matted with 100% Archival Materials
Buy Now	Price: $695.00 US
Condition:	Each of the eight engravings is printed upon early nineteenth century wove paper and with full margins as published in 1805. The four frontispiece engravings bear the season's name in the upper margins while the tailpiece engravings contain the final lines for each season. Each engraving bears the lines they illustrate below. Apart from very slight foxing in the outer margins, all eight engravings are in very good condition and represent prime, original examples of the famous wood engraved art of Thomas Bewick.
Subject:	Thomas Bewick, John Thurston, James Thomson, The Seasons, a complete set of eight original wood engravings, father of wood engraving, rural life and scenes of the English countryside, the white-line method, Newcastle, Boy Chasing a Rainbow, The Lovers, Damon and Musidora, 'Love's Respectful Modesty', The Mother's Tale, The Doctor, A Lost Man, Wolves at the Door, British art.
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