Stephen Gooden, line engraving, frontispiece to The Poet's Cat, 1945, framed

  

Size: Frame 36 cm square, print 10.5 cm x 11 cm to platemark. Condition: Very good condition, even age toning. The mount is new and the frame made from period oak moulding.

This is a line engraving by the pioneer English line engraver Stephen Gooden. It shows a bust of Homer, books leaning against it, and one book open on which sits a tabby cat. The book is entitled "The Poet's Cat". The print is signed by Gooden in the plate and dated'45. This is a print from the engraving on laid paper, not a reproduction. The print was used for reproduction as the frontispiece of an anthology of poetry by Gooden's wife Mona, published by George G Harrap & Co. In 1946, and entitled The Poet's Cat. It is most likely that the cat is Old Whisk, who features in at least one other Gooden engraving (number 23 dated 1940 in Campbell Dodgson's 1944 catalogue raisonée). He studied at the Slade School of Art but his career was interrupted by service in France during the First World War.. From the early 1920s he specialised in line engraving (engraving on copper plate using a burin), an art which had given way to wood engraving and etching for a century or so.

Gooden designed particularly for illustrated books and bookplates, often for famous names. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1933 and a Fellow of the Royal Academy in 1946. He was created a Commander of the British Empire in the 1942 Birthday Honours. Gooden's work can be found in the collections of the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA.