This web site was set up by the Bostock family to display examples of the range of work of James Bostock, the artist, across the range of media in which he worked. The wood engravings of James Bostock are well-documented, but his watercolour paintings and oil paintings are less-well known.
The examples shown come from the family collection of wood engravings, copper etchings, watercolour paintings, oil paintings, drawings and sketches.
The various texts about his work are drawn from a catalogue raisonee of his wood engravings which is now out of print.

James Bostock developed particular techniques for creating watercolour paintings that are striking in their clarity and detail, and skillful in the rendering of shade. His approach was to mix the use of drawing with painting to pleasingly render the detail present in the subject, a technique that gives rise to a style that is easily recognisable.

The wood-engravings of James Bostock are recorded in noteworthy books on the subject and several are held in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection along with examples from other notable wood-engravers of the era. For further details about the life and work of James Bostock, please see the Wikipedia page:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bostock_(painter)

"Wood engraving is a printmaking and letterpress printing technique, in which an artist works an image or matrix of images into a block of wood. Functionally a variety of woodcut, it uses relief printing, where the artist applies ink to the face of the block and prints using relatively low pressure. By contrast, ordinary engraving, like etching, uses a metal plate for the matrix, and is printed by the intaglio method, where the ink fills the valleys, the removed areas. As a result, wood engravings deteriorate less quickly than copper-plate engravings, and have a distinctive white-on-black character." - From Wikipedia

After cutting the block, usually 30 prints would be made by inking the block and using a press to apply pressure between the block and the paper.
For popular prints, a second edition of 30 prints would sometimes be taken. All prints were made by, or under the supervision of the artist, and would usually be signed by the artist as a final step. The value of a print is vested, both in its artistic merit, and it being an authentic impression from a wood block.

The copper engravings of james Bostock feature amongst his earliest work from the late 1930s to 1950. Bostock studied the work of Thomas Bewick (1753- 1828) and the more contemporary Eric Gill (1882-1940) and their influences can be seen in both his copper engravings and wood engravings.
It is rare to find artists which worked in both media because etching lines on copper gives rise to black lines, as in adrawing, but in wood engraving, what is removed by cutting represents areas of white. So each medium requires the artist to think and plan in opposite ways.

Oil paintings form a smaller part of the work of James Bostock. Most of the examples date from the late 1960s to the early 1970's when the artist was resident in Bristol. These are mostly impressionist in style. The nocturne form features in many of these works. These largely explore the effect of evening lighting upon a scene, whether through fading natural lighting, or from street lighting, or a mixture of both.
James Bostock painted with oil for a relatively short time, soon returning to the medium of water colour where he held a distinctive command of the medium.
James Bostock's name remains strongly associated with the tradition of wood engraving. However, those who have come to appreciate his accomplishments in this medium will discover that there is also a broader range of his work to be explored and enjoyed.

For all enquiries about this web site or its content please email: contact@jamesbostock.com