Newcastle

Edward Alexander Wadsworth

1913 · Woodcut on colored paper · Drawings and Prints

Wadsworth was born in the flourishing northern industrial town of Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire, to a family who had grown wealthy from their textile mills. In order to manage these mills, in 1906, he went to Munich to study mechanical draftsmanship and German. Instead, Wadsworth became interested in art, which he continued to pursue once back in Britain. Named for the northern British port, Newcastle, his first known print, reflects his training in mechanical illustration and woodcut as well as the Vorticist interest in industrialization and modernity. Wadsworth monumentalized the cold, hard features of the factory’s tools and equipment—such as the sawtooth and zigzag forms—to evoke the superhuman power of the machine and his family’s business. The image was reproduced in 1914 in the first issue of the Vorticist journal BLAST, in which a manifesto declared "Bless England, Industrial Island machine, pyramidal workshop."

Artist

Edward Alexander Wadsworth

Date

1913

Medium

Woodcut on colored paper

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Purchase, Leslie and Johanna Garfield Gift, Lila Acheson Wallace, Charles and Jessie Price, and David T Schiff Gifts, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, Dolores Valvidia Hurlburt Bequest, Peco Foundation and Friends of Drawings and Prints Gifts, and funds from various donors, 2019