# WARM AFTERNOON

By NORA S. UNWIN, R. E.

NORA S. UNWIN is one of the gifted English engravers who have left their own country to live and work here in the United States. Not unlike her own distinguished country-woman Clare Leighton in technical approach to the block, Nora Unwin has won an enviable reputation in the short time she has been here.

She received eight years of art training in England, including four years at the Royal College of Art and then specializing in wood-engraving with Leon Underwood. She also achieved the distinguished position of being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers. She exhibited her blocks at the Royal Academy and the Society of Woodengravers.

In America, she has had one-man shows of her wood-engravines in Albany, New York, Boston and Manchester. Her prints were shown at the Worcester Art Museum, Library of Congress, Buffalo Print Club, Philadelphia Print Club and Williams College. She has received four major print awards since 1951.

The Bibliothèque Nationale and the Salon de Mai in Paris have frequently shown her work which has also appeared in various European

capitals. Her prints are in the permanent collections of the British Museum, the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Boston Public Library and other institutions.

WARM AFTERNOON, a delightful atmospheric block is typical of her meticulous and imaginative use of the graver and other tools. She created circular light patterns that frame the two reclining figures dramatically and has delineated the figures with a plasticity unique in wood-engraving. The endgrain boxwood has given clear crisp textures that are suggested with smart firm strokes and an ingenious use of the white of the Japanese vellum used in the printing. The idea for the idyllic scene was evolved from a sketch made during an afternoon spent in the Arnold Arboretum in Boston where the artist watched a young mother lying under a chestnut tree with her child.

It is an honor to add Miss Unwin's WARM AFTERNOON to the work of that distinguished roster of English wood-engravers who have contributed to THE WOODCUT SOCIETY in the past; Agnes Miller Parker, Robert Gibbings, John Buckland Wright, Clare Leighton, Eric Slater and now—Nora S. Unwin, R.E.