Paul Landacre, Engraver

Paul Landacre (1893-1963) was a US preeminent wood engraver; he attended Ohio State University as horticulture major but a mysterious infection left him partly crippled and cut short his career. He moved to Southern California with his father in 1916 and took a job as a commercial illustrator. His increasing skill at wood engraving and linocut of natural and landscape subjects, was first recognized by the bookseller Jake Zeitlin. Landacre's work was encouraged and inspired by a group of artists and intellectuals who socialized with the Los Angeles bookseller around 1920 and included journalist Carey McWilliams, photographer Edward Weston and architect Lloyd Wright. Working with an ancient, nearly one-ton hand press that he'd salvaged from a ghost town, Landacre imbued his pastoral scenes with a modernist sensibility. During the 30s he produced editions of single prints, and illustrations for books published mostly by local fine presses. Consistently short of money, Landacre was nevertheless able in 1932 to purchase a home on El Moran Street in Los Angeles, where he and his wife lived for the rest of their lives. His books are California Hills (1931), The Boar and Shibboleth (1933), five books by Donald Culross Peattie (1939-53), Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1943), De Rerum Natura (1957), and On the Origin of Species. From 1953 until his death he taught a course at Otis Art Institute. In 1963 his wife died and four weeks later he committed suicide.