Paul Landacre

Paul Hambleton Landacre (9 July 1893, Columbus, Ohio-1963) is generally recognized as the quintessential American wood engraver. His prints were and remain celebrated for their technical perfection and mastery of design.

Biography

Paul Landacre's trajectory as an artist forms part of the legend surrounding his extraordinary life. A promising student at Ohio State University who also excelled at [track and field] , Landacre was stricken with a streptococcus infection that rendered his upper body permanently and physically weakened. After graduating he moved to the more healthful climate of San Diego where he sought work as a draftsman. He soon relocated to Los Angeles where he met and married Margaret McCreery and began to advance his drawing skills through coursework at the Otis College of Art and Design. In 1926 he quit working as a commercial artist to pursue a full-time career in the fine arts.

Fascinated with printmaking, Landacre taught himself the demanding art of carving linoleum blocks and, eventually, woodblocks for both wood engravings and woodcuts. In a few years he met and impressed Jake Zeitlin, a highly cultured Texan whose antiquarian bookshop in Los Angeles became a cultural hub that survived into the 1980s. Zeitlin's bookshop included a small gallery space for the showing of artworks, primarily prints and drawings, and it is there that Landacre was given his first significant solo show. Zeitlin's ever-widening circle of artists came to include Edward Weston, a photographer who shared the modernist vision that so captivated Landacre. Zeitlin became well-connected to the New York art scene and allied himself with the circle of artists represented by Carl Zigrosser, director of the Weyhe Gallery in Manhattan.

In March 1932, the artist and his wife moved to a rustic house in the Silver Lake district, also known as Edendale, near downtown Los Angeles. This was to be their home for the remainder of their lives, and in March 2006, with the growing appreciation of Landacre's genius, it was declared a City of Los Angeles landmark (Historic Cultural Monument No. 839).

Of national and local appeal, many of Landacre's linoleum cuts and engravings were inspired by the land and sea of the American West, including the hills and mountains of Big Sur, Palm Springs, Monterey, and Berkeley. "California Hills and Other Wood Engravings (Los Angeles: Bruce McCallister, 1931), a limited-edition folio comprising 12 of Landacre's early works printed from the original blocks, was awarded recognition as one of the "Fifty Books of the Year" for 1931. Landacre developed a singular style known for its meticulously carved fine lines, delicate cross hatching, and flecking--elements in white which strikingly contrast with richly blackened areas.

With few exceptions, Landacre printed his wood engravings on a Washington hand press--now in the collection of the International Printing Museum in Carson, California--and used the finest inks and japanese papers. His prints, including his early linocuts, gained early and lasting recognition and can be found in more than a hundred and fifty public collections throughout the United States [These include the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, Huntington Library, Chicago Art Institute, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Amon Carter Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Boston Public Library, Clark Library, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.] .

Landacre died in 1963 soon after--and emotionally resulting from--the death of his wife who had been an essential working companion for 38 years, even helping the artist late in his life pull impressions from the formidable Washington hand press.

Legacy

*Landacre's papers and many of his original blocks and prints are housed at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at UCLA. [ "Register of the Paul Landacre Papers and Artwork, ca. 1915-1983" http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf9v19p2h7]

*Jake Milgram Wien of Stratham, New Hampshire, an independent curator, historian, and author of "Rockwell Kent: The Mythic and the Modern" (Hudson Hills Press, 2005), anticipates completing "Paul Landacre: The Catalogue Raisonne" by the year 2010.

Books

*"California Hills"
*"Flowering Earth: Wood Engravings by Paul Landacre" (1939)
*Peattie, Donald C., "A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America", Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1950; 2nd ed 1966; Reprint as trade paperback with intro by Robert Finch, 1991.
*Peattie, Donald C., "A Natural History of Western Trees", Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1953; Reprint as trade paperback with intro by Robert Finch, 1991.

Notes

References

*Lehman, Anthony L. (1983), "Paul Landacre: A Life and a Legacy", Dawson's Book Shop.