Gerard Brenner à Brandis, wood engraver, painter, illustrator, poet, gardener, and orchidophile, was born in Holland in 1942 and immigrated to Canada with his family in 1947. He received his BA degree in Fine Arts History from the McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1965 and was self-taught in the complicated and demanding arts of wood engraving and book making. He moved to Carlisle, Ontario, and established the Brandstead Press in 1969. His earliest publications were devoted to poetry and prose by friends which were illustrated with his wood engravings. During a visit to England in 1971, Brandis purchased an 1865 Albion hand-printing press. He closed the Brandstead Press in 1986 and moved to Stratford, Ontario, in 1991 where he eventually purchased a Greek revival saltbox built in 1866 that would serve as him well as both home and studio.

Brandis is a member of the Wood Engravers’ Network and co-authored the exhibition catalog The White Line: Wood Engraving in Canada since 1945 which was published by The Porcupine’s Quill, 1990. Marianne Brandis authored Books by Hand: Gerard Bender à Brandis, Wood Engraver and Bookwright. This illustrated book provides a biography of Brandis’s career as a wood engraver.

The work of Gerard Brenner à Brandis is represented in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario Library; the University of California, Santa Barbara; the McMaster Library and Archives; the Royal Botanical Gardens, Hamilton; the Missouri al Garden, Saint Louis; the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Boston; and the Hunt Botanical Library, Carnegie University, Pittsburgh.