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for Thomas Willoughby Nason
American, 1889 - 1971
After graduating from high school, Nason attended business school at night. He started as a clerk in the Portsmouth Navy Yard in Cambridge, went to Manila where he worked as secretary to the Vice Governor of the Phillipines, and then returned to Boston as private secretary to Albert C. Burrage, Boston millionaire.
Nason began life classes in drawing in Boston in 1916 and began to develop his painting skills. He served in World War I in France, and afterwards married Margart Warren (1919).
He made his first wood engraving as a lab experiement in the early 1920s inspired by the revival in that medium. He took landscape as his subject and made numerous sketching trips to the country, often with the engraver Percy Grassby. In 1923 six of his prints were published in Century Magazine any by 1926 the Goodspeed Book Shop in Boston was handling his work.
In 1928 Nason moved to Reading, Massachusetts, to take care of his invalid mother and youngest sister and to devote more time to his art. In 1931, on a visit to his sister, Gertrude, in Lyme, he purchased a piece of property and was settled there by 1938.
In 1933 Nason began to experiment with copper engraving and etching, mediums that would complement his work in wood engraving. His work attracted notice that led to a one-man show at the Boston Public Library (1948) and commercial commissions including illustrations for special editions of the work of Robert Frost, William Cullen Bryant and Thoreau.
The style and sentiments of Nason were very much in harmony with the transcendentalists whose work he illustrated. His works are small, with none larger than 7 x 12: and most quite a bit smaller. He treated pure landscape in his wood engravings, with an emphasis on overall design and contrast, while his country scenes on copper are more delicate and include more complex subjects such as buildings and animals and other signs of life. In either medium his concept of the landscape is always its beauty, order and higher meaning.
Prints in the NAD collection include On the Island and a self-portrait.
Nason began life classes in drawing in Boston in 1916 and began to develop his painting skills. He served in World War I in France, and afterwards married Margart Warren (1919).
He made his first wood engraving as a lab experiement in the early 1920s inspired by the revival in that medium. He took landscape as his subject and made numerous sketching trips to the country, often with the engraver Percy Grassby. In 1923 six of his prints were published in Century Magazine any by 1926 the Goodspeed Book Shop in Boston was handling his work.
In 1928 Nason moved to Reading, Massachusetts, to take care of his invalid mother and youngest sister and to devote more time to his art. In 1931, on a visit to his sister, Gertrude, in Lyme, he purchased a piece of property and was settled there by 1938.
In 1933 Nason began to experiment with copper engraving and etching, mediums that would complement his work in wood engraving. His work attracted notice that led to a one-man show at the Boston Public Library (1948) and commercial commissions including illustrations for special editions of the work of Robert Frost, William Cullen Bryant and Thoreau.
The style and sentiments of Nason were very much in harmony with the transcendentalists whose work he illustrated. His works are small, with none larger than 7 x 12: and most quite a bit smaller. He treated pure landscape in his wood engravings, with an emphasis on overall design and contrast, while his country scenes on copper are more delicate and include more complex subjects such as buildings and animals and other signs of life. In either medium his concept of the landscape is always its beauty, order and higher meaning.
Prints in the NAD collection include On the Island and a self-portrait.
