Leo Bensemann
Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1912, d.1986
Night
- c. 1940-1945
- Wood engraving
- Purchased 2004
- 221 x 145mm
- 2007/028
Tags: flowers (plants), hair, monochrome, mountains, people (agents), stars (motifs), women (female humans)
Exhibition History
Related reading: The Golden Age
Notes
Five eyes by Eric Ravilious
This article first appeared as 'Artist captured poetry in wood carving' in The Press on 11 November 2014.
Notes
Lorton, Cumberland by Tom Chadwick
This article first appeared as 'Wood engraving artist finally won recognition' in The Press on 27 June 2014.
Notes
Death and the woodcutter by Leo Bensemann
This article first appeared as 'Death mastered' in The Press on 28 March 2013.
Notes
Ruth Lowinsky by Eric Gill
This article first appeared as 'An oblique profile' in The Press on 12 July 2013.
Notes
The Print Collection
If the question "what is the largest individual collection area numerically held by the Gallery?" was to be asked, the answer would have to be the Works on Paper collection, within which are 2145 original contemporary and historical prints, the earliest dating from the second half of the fifteenth century.
Notes
St Brendan and the Sea Monsters by Robert Gibbings
This article first appeared in The Press on 14 December 2005
At just 14 cm tall, the exquisite St Brendan and the Sea Monsters by Irish-born Robert Gibbings (1889-1958) is one of the smallest works in Christchurch Art Gallery's collection, but carries with it some of the largest tales. A rhythmic composition of swirling sea serpents, stingrays and sharks, this finely-crafted woodcut print tells the story of 6th century Irish explorer-monk St. Brendan, or Brendan the Navigator, whose recorded travels were an important part of medieval European folklore, and which continue to fascinate.
Article
Tomorrow, Book, Caxton Press, Landfall
In the decades before and after the Second World War, Christchurch experienced a remarkable artistic efflorescence that encompassed the visual arts, literature, music, theatre and the publishing of books and journals. And the phenomenon was noticed beyond these islands. For instance, in his 1955 autobiography, English publisher and editor of Penguin New Writing and London Magazine, John Lehmann, wrote (with a measure of exaggeration, perhaps) that of all the world’s cities only Christchurch at that time acted ‘as a focus of creative literature of more than local significance’.
Collection
Gertrude Hermes More People
This is the largest wood engraving in the exhibition, and was cut from several blocks glued and clamped to one another. Gertrude Hermes’ interest in the human form was mirrored in her work as a sculptor, and like her contemporary Eric Gill she was able to successfully transition between both mediums. Unlike the hard-edged style of many of Gill’s wood engravings, however, Hermes’ line is sinuous and flowing with various tonal gradations throughout the work. As a sculptor she had a good understanding of human forms, which in More People seem to overlap and merge into one another.
The Golden Age 18 December 2015 – 1 May 2016
Collection
Clare Leighton Resting
Much of Clare Leighton’s work as a wood engraver focused on rural labourers going about their lives in the countryside. These works were used extensively as illustrations in her popular books on country life during the 1930s, including The Farmers Year (1933), Four Hedges: A Gardener’s Chronicle (1935) and Country Matters (1937). The skill of Leighton’s wood engraving is evident in this work, where her exquisite and delicately cut lines create incredibly soft tonal variations. The subject is drawn from her time spent in a lumber camp on Canada’s Quebec-Ontario border. One of the most important manuals on wood engraving remains Leighton’s 'Wood-engraving and Woodcuts' from 1938.
The Golden Age 18 December 2015 – 1 May 2016
Collection
Clare Leighton Threshing
Clare Leighton was a distinguished wood engraver in both England and America. Her parents, the popular fiction writers Marie Connor and Robert Leighton, influenced her to write and illustrate her own books. The two woodblocks shown here appear in her first book, The Farmer’s Year: A Calendar of English Husbandry, published in 1933. The Farmer’s Year illustrates the twelve months of the year on the Buckinghamshire farm where Leighton was living. These wood engravings illustrate threshing in March and apple-picking in September.
Leighton said: “Getting to know the farmers and working with them, I learned the pattern of the year as I shared the shepherds hut at lambing time. I stooked the grain at harvest and climbed ladders to pick apples. I had come home.” Leighton felt a great connection to rural life, finding this a more honest way of living than what workers experienced in the city. This outlook was similar to that of the earlier French realists such as Jean-François Millet, who created celebratory depictions of farm life at a time when many people were leaving the countryside and moving to urban areas.
(Leaving for Work, 2 October 2021 - 1 May 2022)