Eric Daglish

British, b.1894, d.1966

Cabbage Butterfly

  • 1925
  • Wood engraving
  • Presented by Mr Rex Nan Kivell, 1953
  • 129 x 106mm
  • 94/116

The London-based art critic Malcolm Salaman was very complimentary about Eric Daglish's work, writing in 1927: Mr Eric F. Daglish has a place of his own among our artists on the wood, by reason both of his chosen subject-matter and his decoratively individual manner of treating it. With delicate white lines on black, simply informing or elaborately grouped, and some rhythmic emphasis of white mass, he will depict the bird or quadruped amid its wonted surroundings of vegetable growth, so that these shall conform to a decorative pattern and yet seem to happen naturally. The bird may be on the bough, the frog on the marsh, the rabbit on the edge of the wood, but the artist’s graver will be no less concerned with the branch and its leaves or cones, the reeds and the rushes, the undergrowth, than with the plumage, the skin, the fur. And what a knowledgeable master of varied plumage is Mr Daglish […] But how decoratively alive they are!

The Golden Age 18 December 2015 – 1 May 2016

Exhibition History

earlier labels about this work
  • Eric Daglish specialised in depicting the natural world. He was a prolific illustrator, with the majority of his wood engravings accompanying his own publications on nature subjects, such as Woodcuts of British Birds (1925). Daglish attended London University and Bonn University, however, it was his close friendship with the artist Paul Nash that encouraged him to develop as a wood engraver. Nash taught Daglish wood engraving and in 1922 the pair became members of the Society of Wood Engravers. As these examples show, Daglish was a highly skilled draughtsman and his attention to detail was ideally suited to the wood engraving medium. (Label date unknown)