Until her Death by Frederick Augustus Sandys - 1862 - 101 x 125 mm British Museum Until her Death by Frederick Augustus Sandys - 1862 - 101 x 125 mm British Museum

Until her Death

Wood-engraving on thin paper • 101 x 125 mm
  • Frederick Augustus Sandys - 1 May 1829 - 25 June 1904 Frederick Augustus Sandys 1862

This is a wood engraving after Frederick Augustus Sandys, printed by the Dalziel Brothers. Sandys was a Pre-Raphaelite painter from Norwich who was particularly admired for his highly expressive wood engravings, of which he designed twenty-five. The pious mood of the subject of Until her Death, in which a solitary religious vocation is contrasted with an early death in childbirth, is typical of the illustrations that appeared in Victorian magazines of the 1860s. Much of Sandys' work was influenced by early German and Netherlandish art, and this design is clearly inspired by Dürer's Melancholia (about which you can read more in our article on DailyArt Magazine).

In correspondence with the Dalziel Brothers, Sandys gave lengthy instructions on how he wanted the block for the print to be cut: “Also the lines of the face I know not if they can be cut or if they will answer the end intended ... Please also to keep my lines quite thick as they are throughout the block ... Mind now, no Dürer's work.” This last comment indicates how much Sandys has separated his admiration for Dürer's subject from a disparaging view of the technique of woodcutting in Dürer's day.