Sydney Lee: Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné

A long-serving member of the Royal Academy of Arts and a founder of the Society of Wood Engravers, Sydney Lee is one of Britain’s most underrated painter-printmakers. Over a period of four decades, he travelled widely throughout central Spain, the Swiss Alps and Italy – the Lakes, Venice and Rome – in search of ancient buildings, geological formations and epic prospects as subjects for his paintings and prints. Lee did much to advance printmaking as an original expressive art form. He was an early British exponent of the colour woodcut in the Japanese manner. Ambitious in experimentation and imposing in scale, his intaglio prints especially pushed the boundaries of traditional practice. Few early 20th-century British printmakers were in command of such a broad range of graphic media. Despite his many achievements, Lee did not gain lasting critical acclaim. After his death, the contents of his studio were dispersed by public auction and the name Lee had made for himself all but died with him. Until now, his prints have never been catalogued and there has been virtually no critical appraisal of his contribution to British art.