Blair Hughes-Stanton (1902 – 1981)

Blair Hughes-Stanton was born in London, the son of Sir Herbert Hughes-Stanton, a distinguished painter. He turned to art only after he had been rejected for the Navy, and studied at the Byam Shaw Art School, London before going onto the Royal College of Art and later the Leon Underwood School of Painting and Sculpture, both in London. He taught at various art schools including Westminster School of Art and St Martin’s School of Art, both in London. For a time he was married to the artist Gertrude Hermes. Under the influence of Leon Underwood and D H Lawrence, many of whose works he illustrated, he became a brilliant engraver and a highly idiosyncratic artist. His reputation rests chiefly on the wood engraved illustrations he made for the Gregnyog Press and others in the 1930s, which kept him firmly in the illustrators’ camp. In the late 1930s he produced a set of outstanding large wood engravings which secured him a place in the history of modernist printmaking. A bullet wound through the face while he was a prisoner of war in 1941 so damaged his sight that the second half of his life was less productive.

Out of the Wood: British Woodcuts and Wood Engravings 1890 - 1945, The British Council 1991

Further reading:
Penelope Hughes-Stanton, The Wood Engravings of Blair Hughes-Stanton, Private Libraries Association, Pinner 1991