SUDBURY.- This autumn, Gainsborough’s House holds the first monographic exhibition in the UK in more than 30 years dedicated to the wood engravings of Monica Poole (1921-2003).

Monica Poole: Nature’s Dark Beauty features over 20 wood engravings, showcasing the exquisite detail that has secured her place as one of the leading practitioners of the medium in the interwar and post-war years.

The last retrospective of her work was at the Ashmolean Museum in 1993, 10 years before her death at the age of 82. Since then, her reputation has continued to grow, and her work resides in many collections across the world including the Ashmolean Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum among many others.

This exhibition is an in-depth opportunity to see the work that was being produced during a flourishing of interest in wood-engraved books celebrating the English countryside. During this revival of wood engraving, Poole remained rooted in the traditions of the medium, but pushed its expressive and technical possibilities, creating dark, surreal and uncanny works.

Born in Canterbury and suffering polio in her early years, the Second World War abruptly paused her formal artistic training at the Thanet School of Art in Margate as her skills were put to use in an aircraft factory. She resumed her studies after 1945 under the celebrated wood engravers John Farleigh (1900-1965) and Geoffrey Wales (1912-1990) where she first became interested in the mastery of texture and fine detail that wood engraving encompasses.

However, for Poole, the subject matter of nature and her chosen medium of wood engraving would fall out of fashion in the subsequent decades, but she continued to dedicate herself to exploring the meticulous detail found in nature and pushing her technical skill and craft to the absolute limit.

Several key works are on display showcasing the intricate organic structures that she became renowned for; comprising roots, bones, twisted trees and abstracted natural forms.

In Piddock Architecture (1975) Poole depicts in incredible detail a fossil thousands of years old that has been subject to the burrowing of molluscs (or ‘angelwings’), highlighting the architecture found deep in nature. In Dry September (1980) nature appears more chaotic with spikey stems and tangled, twisted leaves in a close-up view of a teasel plant, while in Herbage (1978) a focus is given to the primroses and anemonies that are blooming.

A number of her subjects combine in the extremely complex composition of Under Water (1986) where sea kelp, rippling water and long submerged shells come together in a demonstration of Poole’s incredible technical prowess.

These works and many more will feature in a celebration of one of Britain’s most gifted wood engravers. It will show her early alignment with Neo-Romanticism and connection to the British landscape, and her later complex and densely constructed studies of flora and fauna that depict unsettling natural environments.

Calvin Winner, Executive Director, Gainsborough’s House, says: “Monica Poole was a leading British printmaker and wood engraver during the golden age of wood engraving in Britain.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Poole's work aligned with Neo-Romanticism and drew inspiration from a surreal interpretation of the British landscape. Deeply rooted in the natural world, her work frequently explored intricate studies of flora and fauna, as well as densely constructed, unsettling environments.

Despite the originality and quality of her work, Monica Poole has remained largely overlooked in British art history. Gainsborough's House is proud to present the first monographic exhibition of Monica Poole's work since 1993.”