Geoffrey Heath Wedgwood

(1900-04-06)6 April 1900

June 1977

Knowsley, England

English

Rome Scholarship in Engraving, British School at Rome (1925)

ARCA
ARE (1925)
RE (1934)

Early life and education[edit]

Born in Leek, Staffordshire, the son of Jane and Frank Wedgwood, an engineer,[2] but brought up in Liverpool, Wedgwood attended the Liverpool Institute[3] and then served with the British Army in the First World War.[1] From 1919 to 1921 he studied at the Liverpool City School of Art[4][5] 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.[6]


He was a Rome scholar at the British School at Rome, having won the Engraving Prize in 1925,[7] the same year that Edward Irvine Halliday (1902–1984), a fellow Liverpudlian and also a former student at the RCA, won the Painting Prize.[8] 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".[9]


"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."[10]

Career[edit]

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.[5][11]


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.[12] 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.[13]

Roberts, Gruffydd Dewi (1935), The House that was forgotten, illus. by Geoffrey Wedgwood. London: & Thompson Limited OCLC 972865896

Lovat Dickson

Roberts, Gruffydd Dewi (1937), Heron's Island, illus. by Geoffrey Wedgwood. London: Dent  810831172[14]

OCLC

Not complete

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

[15]

Elected an associate of the in 1925[16] and a fellow in 1934.[17]

Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers

Elected associate member of the in 1942 and a full member in 1943. Wedgwood resigned his membership in 1958.[18]

Royal Cambrian Academy

Junior Workers' Guild exhibition, , London, 1925

Mansard Gallery

: "International Exhibition of Contemporary Prints: A Century of Progress" 1 June to 1 November 1934: Outside the Walls engraving by Geoffrey Wedgwood exhibited (no. 136)

Art Institute of Chicago

Sandon Music Room, , School Lane, Liverpool, 1944: "Pictures by Four Artists: N. Martin Bell; Edgar Grosvenor; Charles W. Sharpe; Geoffrey H. Wedgwood"[19]

Bluecoat Chambers

British Council touring exhibition, 1947–1950. An exhibition of prints and drawings from the Wakefield Collection selected by James Laver

Contemporary British Prints and Drawings from the Wakefield Collection

(for example The Borghese Gardens, Rome, exhibited in the summer of 1929)

Royal Academy

New English Art Club

New Bond Street, London[20]

Fine Art Society

Liverpool: "Geoffrey Heath Wedgwood", 2 February – 4 March 1972[21]

Walker Art Gallery

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago: , n.d.

Old Aldgate

London: Porta Capriana, Naples, 1931 (image not shown online)

British Museum

Collection: St Peter's, Genoa, line engraving, 1927, accession no. P2479

British Council

Davison Art Center, , Middletown, CT: Old Aldgate, drypoint, 1924, accession no. 1937.D1.41

Wesleyan University

Washington University in St. Louis: S.S. Giovanni e Paolo, Rome, 1926, accession no. WU 3719

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

Minneapolis: Pincian Gardens, Rome, 1930

Minneapolis Institute of Art

: Borghese Gardens, Rome, 1928, and The Fishmarket, Naples, 1929 (both etching and drypoint)

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Melbourne: The fishmarket, Naples, 1929, drypoint; Street scene, 1931, drypoint;

National Gallery of Victoria

University Art Gallery, Pittsburgh: The Capitol, Rome, accession no. 72.1.16

: several items[22]

University of Liverpool

: St Peter's, Genoa, accession no. E.859-1959

Victoria and Albert Museum

Guichard, Kenneth M. (1977, 2nd ed. 1981), British Etchers 1850–1940. London: Robin Garton  9780906030097 OCLC 932468675

ISBN

Hopkinson, Martin (1999). No Day without a Line. The History of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, 1880–1999. Oxford: hardback ISBN 1854440969 paperback ISBN 1854441191

Ashmolean Museum

Laver, J. "The Etchings of Geoffrey Heath Wedgwood", Bookman's Journal, XII, p. 231, 1925

(1972), Geoffrey Heath Wedgwood (exh. cat., Walker Art Gallery, 2 February – 4 March 1972). Liverpool: National Museums & Galleries on Merseyside ISBN 9780901534101 OCLC 877358790

Morris, Edward

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  876747587 and OCLC 4314424

OCLC