John Brown - (from "John Brown's Body" suite of 11 woodengravings) by Barry Moser

John Brown - (from John Browns Body suite of 11 woodengravings) by Barry Moser

John Brown - (from "John Brown's Body" suite of 11 woodengravings)

Barry Moser

Please call us at 707-546-7352 or email artannex@aol.com to purchase this item.
Title

John Brown - (from "John Brown's Body" suite of 11 woodengravings)

 
Artist

Barry Moser

  1940 - PRESENT (biography)
Year
1978  
Technique
woodengraving 
Image Size
8 x 4 3/4" image size 
Signature
pencil, lower center 
Edition Size
100 
Annotations
 
Reference
 
Paper
thin white wove 
State
published 
Publisher
The American Past Book-Of-the-Month-Club (Holt, Rinehart, & Winston), 1980 
Inventory ID
23855 
Price
$200.00 
Description

In 1978 the Book-of-the-Month Club approached Barry Moser at Pennyroyal Press about illustrating the inaugural book in their upcoming series, titled The American Past. It would be a 50th anniversary edition of "John Brown's Body", an epic poem by American poet and writer Stephen Vincent Benet. An account of the American Civil War, slavery, and the famed abolitionist John Brown, Benet wrote the poem while living in Paris on a Guggenheim fellowship in 1926.

Moser agreed to the commission and created eleven woodengravings for the project, the first 100 of which were pulled by Harold McGrath and set aside for the collaborators. The book was published in 1980.

An introductory note on the images reads: "Of these eleven wood engravings, eight portray men and women who suffered the outrage of slavery, the ignominy of war, & the anonymity of suffering & death. Two depict the terrible effluence of war - the broken weapons, the raped earth, the mute & still flesh. The remaining image is allegory - the cruel chevaux-de-fris, the simple, incessant thunder of burning hooves, the troubled and sick air. - Archibald MacLeish

 
Please call us at 707-546-7352 or email artannex@aol.com to purchase this item.