Ernest A. Pickup

Ernest Alexander Pickup (1887-1970) was an American printmaker.

Early life

Ernest Alexander Pickup was born April 10, 1887 in Shelbyville, Tennessee the son of George Alexander Pickup and Rebecca Cannon. As a young man he moved with his family to Brooklyn, New York in 1894 where he attended school before moving to Baltimore, Maryland. After a few years in Baltimore, the Pickups returned briefly to Brooklyn before permanently settling in Nashville, Tennessee around the turn of the century.

Career

In 1912 he began a career as a commercial artist, and over the next 18 years built a successful business in Nashville. During the Depression, however, Pickup’s business, like most in America, began to suffer. With time on his hands, Pickup began experimenting with wood engraving in the early 1930s. He studied the work of other artists –primarily Claire Leighton, Rockwell Kent and Thomas Nason and to a lesser extent Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood. Claire Leighton’s book on wood engraving and woodcuts became his Bible on making woodcuts, but it was Thomas Nason’s simple architectural themes and pastoral renderings that inspired his subject matter. Pickup and Nason shared a common view of nature and the countryside, and the majority of his prints reflected his love of nature as well as his appreciation for the historical places and the rural area in and around Nashville.

Pickup was one of only a handful of artists in Tennessee who worked with wood engraving. He exhibited nationally throughout the 1930s, and became nationally recognized for his work. In January 1937 his prints were exhibited in the National Exhibition of Lithographs, Woodcuts, and Block Prints New York City, and from that exhibition one of his prints was selected by The Society of American Etchers for a tour of European Galleries, beginning in Stockholm, Sweden.

His work was included in the “Sixth International Exhibition of Lithography and Wood Engraving,” at the Art Institute of Chicago, November 5, 1937 to January 10, 1938. From that exhibition his print was chosen as one of the best 100 works for a traveling show throughout America.

With America’s entry in World War II there was an increased demand for commercial artwork, and as a result Pickup’s printmaking suffered. By the late 1940s he had returned full time to his commercial artwork. He remained, however, connected to the arts community well into the 1950s. He still exhibited his work occasionally and gave occasional lectures on woodblock printing to local organizations.

In 1962 at the age of seventy-five he closed his business with the intention of retiring. Before he was able to move out of his studio, he was enticed to work another five years for a printing company for which he had done art work for many years. He died February 24, 1970 in Nashville.

Recently his work was included in an exhibition at the Georgia Museum of the University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, summer 2007 and is scheduled for the summer of 2008 to be held at Auburn University Art Museum in Alabama.

References

* "E.A. Pickup Services Conducted", Nashville Banner, February 26, 1970
* Who's Who in American Art, 1936-37, 1938-39, editions
* Falk, Peter Hastings (editor), Who Was Who in American Art, Sound View Press, Madison, CT., 1985+ St.John,Beverly, "He Came into the World Drawing", Ernest A. Pickup, (1887-1970), Mashville Historical Newsletter, Mike Slate, editor, January, 2006
* St. John, Beverly, "He Came Into This World Drawing": Ernest A. Pickup (1887-1970)", Nashville Arts Magazine, Reed Publishing, Nashville, TN, December 2006
* Williams, Lynn Barstis, Imprinting the South: southern printmakers and their images of the region, 1920s-1940s, The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 2007

External links

* [http://pages.prodigy.net/nhn.slate/nh00091.html "He Came Into This World Drawing": Ernest A. Pickup (1887-1970)]