History in the making - Thomas Bewick
Last updated at 14:45, Friday, 20 March 2009
MASTER engraver, artist and naturalist, Thomas Bewick is one of Tynedale’s most famous sons.
A pioneer of his craft, he achieved a level of detail and intricacy in his work never before witnessed.
Born in August 1753 at Cherryburn House, on the south bank of the River Tyne, at Mickley, he was the eldest of eight children.
His parents, John and Jane, had married just the previous year and were the tenants of the small eight-acre farm and nearby colliery.
A poor scholar, as a boy Bewick was expected to help around the farm and the colliery,but his desire to roam the Tyne Valley’s vast landscapes, fishing, bird watching and looking at flowers and animals, often led him to stray from his tasks.
From a very young age his talent for drawing was obvious and he was sent to school in nearby Ovingham where he was taught by the Rev. Christopher Gregson.
At the age of 14, he was apprenticed to Ralph Beilby, the owner of a successful engraving business in Newcastle. Here, for the next seven years, he learned the skills necessary to excel in the engraving business.
Beilby soon recognised his young protégé’s obvious talent for woodcut engraving and Bewick was set to work on a number of book illustrations, including such children’s classics as Tommy Trip’s History of Beasts and Birds, Fables by the late Mr Gay and Select Fables for Thomas Saint, a Newcastle printer.
At the end of his apprenticeship, Bewick decided to make the most of his new-found free time, which in his Memoirs of Thomas Bewick, released in 1862 after his death, he describes as “a time of great enjoyment”.
He set out alone and on foot on a 500-mile tour of Scotland, and on his return to Newcastle immediately took a coal carrier bound for London to try his luck in the “great city”.
But London was not to his liking and, although he could easily have set up business there, he returned home to Newcastle as soon as he could.
After only a few months in Blackfriars he wrote to an old school friend: “I would rather be herding sheep on Mickley Bank top than remain in London!”
But wherever he was, his heart was never far from Cherryburn and he immortalised it in many of his engravings.
After resuming his work with Ralph Beilby in 1777, the pair became business partners and Bewick took on his younger brother, John, as his apprentice.
John eventually followed in his brother’s footsteps and went to London.
He settled there, working as a successful illustrator until illness forced him to return to Northumberland, where he died in 1795.
After the death of his parents in 1785, Bewick’s thoughts turned to marriage and more particularly, Isabella “Bell” Elliot, who he credits in his memoirs with bringing him “a life of uninterrupted happiness”.
The couple were married in St John’s Church, Newcastle, in 1786, and went on to have four children – Jane, Robert Elliott, Isabella and Elizabeth.
Meanwhile, Beilby and Bewick’s engraving business flourished with the pair setting out on an ambitious project to produce a General History of Quadrupeds.
This volume, which was intended to encourage the youth of the day in the study of natural history, was published in 1790.
The work became a success, largely due to the freshness of the detail used in each drawing.
And although Bewick’s depiction of a giraffe or “cameleopard” makes it clear he’d probably never seen the animal himself, his ability to set the illustration against an imaginary background became his trademark.
In July, 1791, Bewick travelled to Wycliffe Hall near Barnard Castle, the home of the late Marmaduke Tunstall, to start a companion work on birds.
He first met Tunstall during the commissioning of a large engraving of the Chillingham Bull published in 1789 – Bewick’s most celebrated woodcut.
Tunstall had an extensive private museum collection, which included many stuffed birds and foreign species, and following his death, Bewick was invited to spend two months at Wycliffe by William Constable, who had inherited the estate.
After sketching many of the birds, Bewick wrote to Beilby about his concerns over the enormity of the task, making his feelings clear about the badly stuffed specimens.
So it was decided to concentrate the book on British birds only and two volumes of the History of British Birds were subsequently published – Land Birds in 1797 and Water Birds in 1804.
Sadly, the partnership of Beilby and Bewick ended acrimoniously in January 1798.
Bewick, retaining the engraving business, went on to publish further revised editions of quadrupeds and British birds, while commissions for wood-engraved illustrations continued to flood in, among them one for The Poetical Works of Robert Burns, printed and published in Alnwick by William Davison in 1808.
In 1812, Bewick turned his attention to a new, but long-cherished wood-engraving venture, The Fables of Aesop and Others.
Throughout childhood, he had spent much time reading fables and moral tales, which inspired the vignettes or “tale-pieces” he went on to create.
He eventually published the work in 1818.
Bewick died in 1828, aged 75, leaving the business to his son, Robert, along with a wealth of drawings, paintings, wood blocks and engravings.
Bewick was buried in St Mary’s Church, Ovingham.
Robert went on to publish two further editions about birds in 1832 and 1847 and also Bewick’s last work, a large engraving on wood, entitled Waiting for Death, published in 1832.
At his daughter, Jane’s insistence, Bewick had produced an account of his life, but the manuscript lay untouched for more than 30 years following his death, before being published in 1862.
His memoirs were re-published in the 1970s, edited by Iain Bain into a version that followed the original manuscript exactly, including Bewick’s occasionally erratic spelling.
The great fascination with Bewick’s life continued during the lives of his family and a large collection of watercolour and pencil drawings were presented to the Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham and Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1883.
Fast forward to the 20th century and it was the sale of the Cherryburn estate in 1982 which sparked a resurgence of interest in Bewick in the North-East.
Officially opened in 1988, it is preserved by the National Trust, while The Bewick Society, launched in 1989, works tirelessly to promote his legacy worldwide.
First published at 12:10, Friday, 27 February 2009
Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk
