Thomas Bewick
Encyclopedia
Thomas Bewick was an English
wood engraver
and ornithologist
.
Bewick was born at Cherryburn House
in the village of Mickley
, in the parish of Ovingham
, Northumberland
, England, near Newcastle upon Tyne
on 12 August 1753. His father rented a small colliery
at Mickley Bank, and sent his son to school in the nearby village of Ovingham. His current descendants are living in Nuneaton
and Birmingham
, United Kingdom.
Bewick was a poor scholar, but showed, at a very early age, a talent for drawing. He had no lessons in art. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to Ralph Beilby
, an engraver in Newcastle. In Beilby's workshop Bewick engraved a series of diagrams on wood for Dr. Charles Hutton
, illustrating a treatise on mensuration
. He seems thereafter to have devoted himself entirely to engraving on wood, and in 1775 he received a premium from the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce
for a wood engraving of the "Huntsman and the Old Hound". In 1776 he became a partner in Beilby's workshop.
s and seal
s but does not include whale
s or dolphin
s. The Birds is specifically British. Bewick was helped by his intimate knowledge of the habits of animals acquired during his constant excursions into the country. He also recounts information passed to him by acquaintances and local gentry, and that obtained in natural history works of his time, including those by Thomas Pennant
and Gilbert White
, as well as the translation of Buffon
's Histoire naturelle. Many of the illustrations most frequently reproduced at the present day are vignette
s and tailpieces at the bottoms of the pages of the original.
Bewick's art is considered the pinnacle of its medium. This is likely due to his methods: Bewick, unlike his predecessors, would carve in harder woods, notably box wood
, against the grain
, using fine tools normally favoured by metal engravers. This proved to be far superior, and has been the dominant method used since. Works using this technique for which he became well known included the engravings for Oliver Goldsmith
's Traveller and Deserted Village, for Thomas Parnell
's Hermit, for William Somervile
's Chase. Bewick had numerous pupils, several of whom gained distinction as engravers. These included Luke Clennell
, Charlton Nesbit
, William Harvey
, and his son and later partner Robert Elliott Bewick.
Bewick's autobiography, Memoirs of Thomas Bewick, by Himself, appeared in 1862. Shortly after his death, he was commemorated by the naming of a species of swan
, Bewick's Swan
. Bewick's Wren
also took his name and Thomas Bewick Primary School, in Newcastle upon Tyne, is named after him.
Bewick is also noteworthy for having used his fingerprint
as a form of signature, in conjunction with his written name to denote individuality in his publications. The significance of this happening nearly 200 years ago lead some to believe that Bewick is among the first to recognize the uniqueness of each individual human fingerprint.
illustrated by Bewick span almost his entire creative life. The first was executed for the Newcastle bookseller Thomas Saint during his apprentice years. This was an edition of Robert Dodsley
's Select Fables published in 1776. With his brother John he later contributed to a three volume edition for the same publisher in 1784. Pictures from the 1776 edition fairly obviously reappear there and Bewick's habit of recycling earlier work for later use can be illustrated from both. The picture of "The Crow and the Pitcher" from 1776 was also to become a vignette in the first edition of the History of British Birds (Volume 1: Land Birds, 1797). Earlier on, there was a vignette of a man sleeping beneath a shrub, adapted from the 1784 illustration to "The Bear and the Two Friends", in the first edition of the General History of the Quadrupeds (1790).
A third edition of the fables was the work of Bewick's maturity. While convalescing from a dangerous illness in 1812, he turned his attention to a long-cherished venture, a large three-volume edition of The Fables of Aesop and Others, eventually published in 1818. The work is divided into three sections: the first has some of Dodsley's fables prefaced by a short prose moral; the second has 'Fables with Reflections', in which each story is followed by a prose and a verse moral and then a lengthy prose reflection; the third, 'Fables in Verse', includes fables from other sources in poems by several unnamed authors. Engravings were initially designed on the wood by Bewick, while cutting was carried out by his apprentices under close supervision and refined where necessary by himself. Used in this edition was the method that Thomas had pioneered, called 'white-line' engraving, a dark-to-light technique where the lines to remain white are cut out of the woodblock. Boxwood cut across the end-grain is hard enough for such fine engraving, allowing greater detail than in normal woodcutting.
in particular. He had wished to encourage the Northumbrian smallpipes, and to support the piper John Peacock
, so he encouraged Peacock to teach pupils to become masters of this kind of music. One of these pupils was Thomas's own son, Robert
, whose surviving manuscript tunebooks are an important picture of a piper's repertoire in the 1820s.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
wood engraver
Wood engraving
Wood engraving is a technique in printmaking where the "matrix" worked by the artist is a block of wood. It is a variety of woodcut and so a relief printing technique, where ink is applied to the face of the block and printed by using relatively low pressure. A normal engraving, like an etching,...
and ornithologist
Ornithology
Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and the aesthetic appeal of birds...
.
Early life and apprenticeship
Cherryburn
Cherryburn is a cottage in Mickley, Northumberland, England, which was the birthplace of Thomas Bewick, an English wood engraver and ornithologist. It was acquired by the National Trust in 1991 and is now open to the public.-External links:*...
in the village of Mickley
Mickley
Mickley is a small hamlet near Prudhoe and Stocksfield in the English county of Northumberland. It lies south of the river Tyne and is accessible via the A695. The neighbouring villages of Mickley Square and High Mickley are usually included under the general name of Mickley. This village once...
, in the parish of Ovingham
Ovingham
Ovingham is a civil parish and village in the Tyne Valley of south Northumberland, England. It lies on the River Tyne east of Hexham with neighbours Prudhoe, Ovington, Wylam and Stocksfield....
, Northumberland
Northumberland
Northumberland is the northernmost ceremonial county and a unitary district in North East England. For Eurostat purposes Northumberland is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "Northumberland and Tyne and Wear" NUTS 2 region...
, England, near Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...
on 12 August 1753. His father rented a small colliery
Coal mining
The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...
at Mickley Bank, and sent his son to school in the nearby village of Ovingham. His current descendants are living in Nuneaton
Nuneaton
Nuneaton is the largest town in the Borough of Nuneaton and Bedworth and in the English county of Warwickshire.Nuneaton is most famous for its associations with the 19th century author George Eliot, who was born on a farm on the Arbury Estate just outside Nuneaton in 1819 and lived in the town for...
and Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, United Kingdom.
Bewick was a poor scholar, but showed, at a very early age, a talent for drawing. He had no lessons in art. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to Ralph Beilby
Ralph Beilby
Ralph Beilby was an English engraver, working chiefly on silver and copper.He was the son of William Beilby, a jeweller and goldsmith of Durham who later moved to Newcastle upon Tyne to look for better opportunities. Ralph became a silversmith, jeweller, and seal-engraver under his father and...
, an engraver in Newcastle. In Beilby's workshop Bewick engraved a series of diagrams on wood for Dr. Charles Hutton
Charles Hutton
Charles Hutton was an English mathematician.Hutton was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne. He was educated in a school at Jesmond, kept by Mr Ivison, a clergyman of the Church of England...
, illustrating a treatise on mensuration
Measurement
Measurement is the process or the result of determining the ratio of a physical quantity, such as a length, time, temperature etc., to a unit of measurement, such as the metre, second or degree Celsius...
. He seems thereafter to have devoted himself entirely to engraving on wood, and in 1775 he received a premium from the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce
Royal Society of Arts
The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce is a British multi-disciplinary institution, based in London. The name Royal Society of Arts is frequently used for brevity...
for a wood engraving of the "Huntsman and the Old Hound". In 1776 he became a partner in Beilby's workshop.
Work
A General History of Quadrupeds appeared in 1790 and Bewick's great achievement, that with which his name is inseparably associated, the History of British Birds, was published from 1797-1804. His Birds was published in two volumes, "Land Birds" and "Water Birds", with a supplement in 1821. The Quadrupeds deals with mammals of the whole world, and is particularly thorough on some of the domestic animals. It includes batBat
Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera "hand" and pteron "wing") whose forelimbs form webbed wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums, and colugos, glide rather than fly,...
s and seal
Pinniped
Pinnipeds or fin-footed mammals are a widely distributed and diverse group of semiaquatic marine mammals comprising the families Odobenidae , Otariidae , and Phocidae .-Overview: Pinnipeds are typically sleek-bodied and barrel-shaped...
s but does not include whale
Whale
Whale is the common name for various marine mammals of the order Cetacea. The term whale sometimes refers to all cetaceans, but more often it excludes dolphins and porpoises, which belong to suborder Odontoceti . This suborder also includes the sperm whale, killer whale, pilot whale, and beluga...
s or dolphin
Dolphin
Dolphins are marine mammals that are closely related to whales and porpoises. There are almost forty species of dolphin in 17 genera. They vary in size from and , up to and . They are found worldwide, mostly in the shallower seas of the continental shelves, and are carnivores, mostly eating...
s. The Birds is specifically British. Bewick was helped by his intimate knowledge of the habits of animals acquired during his constant excursions into the country. He also recounts information passed to him by acquaintances and local gentry, and that obtained in natural history works of his time, including those by Thomas Pennant
Thomas Pennant
Thomas Pennant was a Welsh naturalist and antiquary.The Pennants were a Welsh gentry family from the parish of Whitford, Flintshire, who had built up a modest estate at Bychton by the seventeenth century...
and Gilbert White
Gilbert White
Gilbert White FRS was a pioneering English naturalist and ornithologist.-Life:White was born in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne in Hampshire. He was educated at the Holy Ghost School and by a private tutor in Basingstoke before going to Oriel College, Oxford...
, as well as the translation of Buffon
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopedic author.His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier...
's Histoire naturelle. Many of the illustrations most frequently reproduced at the present day are vignette
Vignette (graphic design)
Vignettes, in graphic design, are decorative designs usually in books, used both to separate sections or chapters and to decorate borders.In Descriptive, or Analytical Bibliography for the hand-press period a vignette refers to an engraved design printed using a copper-plate press, on a page that...
s and tailpieces at the bottoms of the pages of the original.
Buxus sempervirens
Buxus sempervirens is a flowering plant in the genus Buxus, native to western and southern Europe, northwest Africa, and southwest Asia, from southern England south to northern Morocco, and east through the northern Mediterranean region to Turkey. Buxus colchica of western Caucasus and B...
, against the grain
Plane (tool)
A hand plane is a tool for shaping wood. When powered by electricity, the tool may be called a planer. Planes are used to flatten, reduce the thickness of, and impart a smooth surface to a rough piece of lumber or timber. Planing is used to produce horizontal, vertical, or inclined flat surfaces on...
, using fine tools normally favoured by metal engravers. This proved to be far superior, and has been the dominant method used since. Works using this technique for which he became well known included the engravings for Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish writer, poet and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield , his pastoral poem The Deserted Village , and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer...
's Traveller and Deserted Village, for Thomas Parnell
Thomas Parnell
Thomas Parnell was a poet and clergyman, born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He was a friend of both Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. He participated in the Scriblerus Club, contributing to The Spectator, and he also aided Pope in his translation of The Iliad...
's Hermit, for William Somervile
William Somervile
William Somervile or Somerville was an English poet.-Ancestry:The name Somervile is derived from a town near Caen in Normandy subsequently named Somervile....
's Chase. Bewick had numerous pupils, several of whom gained distinction as engravers. These included Luke Clennell
Luke Clennell
Luke Clennell was an English engraver and painter.Born in Morpeth, Northumberland, the son of a farmer, he was apprenticed to the engraver Thomas Bewick in 1797. Between 1799 and 1803 he acted as Bewick's principal assistant on the second volume of the History of British Birds...
, Charlton Nesbit
Charlton Nesbit
-Life:He was born in Swalwell in County Durham, the son a keelman. Nesbit became the engraver Thomas Bewick's apprentice in Newcastle about 1789. During his apprenticeship, he drew and engraved the bird's nest that heads the preface in the first volume of A History of British Birds and he engraved...
, William Harvey
William Harvey (artist)
William Harvey was an English engraver and designer.Born at Newcastle upon Tyne, Harvey was the son of a bath-keeper. At the age of 14, he was apprenticed to Thomas Bewick, and became one of his favorite pupils. Bewick describes him as one "who both as an engraver & designer, stands preeminent" at...
, and his son and later partner Robert Elliott Bewick.
Bewick's autobiography, Memoirs of Thomas Bewick, by Himself, appeared in 1862. Shortly after his death, he was commemorated by the naming of a species of swan
Swan
Swans, genus Cygnus, are birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae...
, Bewick's Swan
Bewick's Swan
The Tundra Swan is a small Holarctic swan. The two taxa within it are usually regarded as conspecific, but are also sometimes split into two species, Cygnus bewickii of the Palaearctic and the Whistling Swan, C. columbianus proper, of the Nearctic...
. Bewick's Wren
Bewick's Wren
The Bewick's Wren is a wren native to North America. At about 14 cm long, it is grey-brown above, white below, with a long white eyebrow. While similar in appearance to the Carolina Wren, it has a long tail that is tipped in white. The song is loud and melodious, much like the song of other...
also took his name and Thomas Bewick Primary School, in Newcastle upon Tyne, is named after him.
Bewick is also noteworthy for having used his fingerprint
Fingerprint
A fingerprint in its narrow sense is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. In a wider use of the term, fingerprints are the traces of an impression from the friction ridges of any part of a human hand. A print from the foot can also leave an impression of friction ridges...
as a form of signature, in conjunction with his written name to denote individuality in his publications. The significance of this happening nearly 200 years ago lead some to believe that Bewick is among the first to recognize the uniqueness of each individual human fingerprint.
Editions of Aesop's Fables
The various editions of Aesop's FablesAesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica are a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today...
illustrated by Bewick span almost his entire creative life. The first was executed for the Newcastle bookseller Thomas Saint during his apprentice years. This was an edition of Robert Dodsley
Robert Dodsley
Robert Dodsley was an English bookseller and miscellaneous writer.-Life:He was born near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, where his father was master of the free school....
's Select Fables published in 1776. With his brother John he later contributed to a three volume edition for the same publisher in 1784. Pictures from the 1776 edition fairly obviously reappear there and Bewick's habit of recycling earlier work for later use can be illustrated from both. The picture of "The Crow and the Pitcher" from 1776 was also to become a vignette in the first edition of the History of British Birds (Volume 1: Land Birds, 1797). Earlier on, there was a vignette of a man sleeping beneath a shrub, adapted from the 1784 illustration to "The Bear and the Two Friends", in the first edition of the General History of the Quadrupeds (1790).
A third edition of the fables was the work of Bewick's maturity. While convalescing from a dangerous illness in 1812, he turned his attention to a long-cherished venture, a large three-volume edition of The Fables of Aesop and Others, eventually published in 1818. The work is divided into three sections: the first has some of Dodsley's fables prefaced by a short prose moral; the second has 'Fables with Reflections', in which each story is followed by a prose and a verse moral and then a lengthy prose reflection; the third, 'Fables in Verse', includes fables from other sources in poems by several unnamed authors. Engravings were initially designed on the wood by Bewick, while cutting was carried out by his apprentices under close supervision and refined where necessary by himself. Used in this edition was the method that Thomas had pioneered, called 'white-line' engraving, a dark-to-light technique where the lines to remain white are cut out of the woodblock. Boxwood cut across the end-grain is hard enough for such fine engraving, allowing greater detail than in normal woodcutting.
Northumbrian music
Bewick was fond of the music of Northumberland, and of the Northumbrian smallpipesNorthumbrian smallpipes
The Northumbrian smallpipes are bellows-blown bagpipes from the North East of England.In a survey of the bagpipes in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University, the organologist Anthony Baines wrote: It is perhaps the most civilized of the bagpipes, making no attempt to go farther than the...
in particular. He had wished to encourage the Northumbrian smallpipes, and to support the piper John Peacock
John Peacock (piper)
John Peacock was one of the finest Northumbrian smallpipers of his age, and probably a fiddler also, and the last of the Newcastle Waits. He was born in Morpeth about 1756, and died in Newcastle, 'in distress'...
, so he encouraged Peacock to teach pupils to become masters of this kind of music. One of these pupils was Thomas's own son, Robert
Robert Bewick
Robert Bewick was the son of the engraver Thomas Bewick. Thomas had wished to encourage the Northumbrian smallpipes, and to support the piper John Peacock; in his autobiographical Memoir, written in the 1820's, he wrote Some time before the American War broke out, there had been a lack of...
, whose surviving manuscript tunebooks are an important picture of a piper's repertoire in the 1820s.