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Geoffrey Heath Wedgwood

Geoffrey Heath Wedgwood, ARCA, RE (6 April 1900 – June 1977) was a British etcher and engraver, best known for his architectural etchings.

Early life and education

Born in Leek, Staffordshire, the son of Jane and Frank Wedgwood, an engineer, but brought up in Liverpool, Wedgwood attended the Liverpool Institute and then served with the British Army in the First World War. From 1919 to 1921 he studied at the Liverpool City School of Art Winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, London, he studied engraving there under Sir Frank Short and from 1924 under his successor Malcolm Osborne.

He was a Rome scholar at the British School at Rome, having won the Engraving Prize in 1925, the same year that Edward Irvine Halliday (1902–1984), a fellow Liverpudlian and also a former student at the RCA, won the Painting Prize. According to Edward Morris, writing in the Connoisseur, Wedgwood "reverted to architectural subjects; his line became harder and more precise; his effects clearer and sharper; less of his work was etched, more engraved; some of the credit for these effects must go to the printer, David Strang".

"In Wedgwood's architectural etchings", wrote Guichard, "the severity of the formal harmonies of square and rectangle in the roofs and walls of old buildings is relieved by gentle caricature in the small local figures that inhabit the scenes and are sympathetically observed."

Career

He later taught at the Liverpool Institute from 1932 to 1935 and at the Liverpool City School of Art from 1935 until his retirement in 1960.

He also worked as an illustrator. His etchings for menus were shown at the L.N.E.R. exhibition of poster art at Burlington Galleries in 1933. Among various projects for Martins Bank advertising in the early 1950s, he was commissioned together with J. C. Armitage (Ionicus) and F. G. Lodge, to do drawings of English stately homes.

Published works

Not complete

  • Roberts, Gruffydd Dewi (1935), The House that was forgotten, illus. by Geoffrey Wedgwood. London: Lovat Dickson & Thompson Limited
  • Roberts, Gruffydd Dewi (1937), Heron's Island, illus. by Geoffrey Wedgwood. London: Dent

Awards and honours

  • Winner of the Engraving Prize (1925) to be a scholar at the British School at Rome with two works: Negro Dentist and St Pancras Washhouse
  • Elected an associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1925 and a fellow in 1934.
  • Elected associate member of the Royal Cambrian Academy in 1942 and a full member in 1943. Wedgwood resigned his membership in 1958.

Exhibitions

Works in public collections

References

Further reading

  • Guichard, Kenneth M. (1977, 2nd ed. 1981), British Etchers 1850–1940. London: Robin Garton
  • Hopkinson, Martin (1999). No Day without a Line. The History of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, 1880–1999. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum hardback paperback
  • Laver, J. "The Etchings of Geoffrey Heath Wedgwood", Bookman's Journal, XII, p. 231, 1925
  • Morris, Edward (1972), An Exhibition of the Works of Geoffrey Heath Wedgwood (exh. cat., Walker Art Gallery, 2 February – 4 March 1972). Liverpool: National Museums & Galleries on Merseyside
  • University of Liverpool (1977): The work of Geoffrey Heath Wedgwood from the collection of the University of Liverpool (exh. cat. with introduction by Andrew W. Moore). Liverpool: University of Liverpool and