Scene Through Wood

‘Scene through Wood’ offers a visual feast of the finest wood engravings of the past 100 years, and celebrates the extraordinary artists, past and present, who made them. Curated by engraver and artist Anne Desmet RA RE, this exhibition from the University of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum — home to one of the most extensive collections of wood engravings in the world — celebrates the founding centenary of the British Society of Wood Engravers (SWE).


Wood engraving is a historic printing technique, notable for producing images of enduring artistic relevance with extremely fine detail and outstanding tonal range. Possibly the only art form to have originated in England, it was developed, honed and refined to extraordinary finesse by the naturalist Thomas Bewick (1753–1828). The exhibition begins by tracing the origins and early development of wood engraving including an early woodcut by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), who influenced the wood engraving of Bewick and William Blake (1757–1827).