She probably is best known outside Canada, if she is known at all, for her paintings and stained glass. Yet few contemporary wood engravers bring nature to life on the printed page as well as does Rosemary Kilbourn (images via The Porcupine's Quill):
Born in Toronto in 1931, Klibourn received a medal for drawing and painting when she graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1953. She followed this up with a stint at the Slade School of Fine Art in London.
Kilbourn's artistic remit has broadened considerably over the decades. She has numerous group and individual shows to her credit, and her artistic work is represented in a variety of media at major museums and galleries across Canada. She was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts over 30 years ago.
Among the first books that Kilbourn illustrated were a couple by her brother, William (image via Historical Perspectives on Canadian Publishing):
She also was an early illustrator of books by well-known Canadian author Farley Mowat (image via BookIt):
Kilbourn recalls some of this early work quite fondly:
When I arrived at the Slade School, I found that I had just missed John Buckland-Wright as a teacher, since he had died a few months before I enrolled. I studied etching with Anthony Gross, whose opinion of my work he expressed (a bit sourly) as: ‘You are nothing but a wood engraver.’
Back in Canada my brother William was just finishing his biography of William Lyon Mackenzie, called The Firebrand (1956), and he invited me to illustrate the book. This was really my learning exercise; it helped me to see where I needed more clarity in the cutting. It was also a disappointment, because the quality of reproduction was not good.
The next year I found an old schoolhouse in Peel County where I decided I wanted to live. I had read an article by my new neighbour, Farley Mowat, on the injustice of the trial of Kiki, an Inuit woman, who, with her starving children, had been forced to defend herself from one of her people gone mad from hunger. I made an engraving of Kiki and gave it to Farley, who then asked me to illustrate the book that became The Desperate People (1958). Farley lent me his slides of the Inuit and their land, and a dentist’s slide enlarger, so that I could work with them as reference....
Besides illustrating books, Kilbourn designed a Canadian postage stamp (a 17-cents stamp of 1979), has produced a number of paintings, and is responsible for a number of the stained glass windows that adorn Canadian churches.
The stained glass window pictured left was produced for Ottawa's St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church: ...the St. Luke window of 1966 by Rosemary Kilbourn ... is a memorial to Dr. Robert Elmer Wodehouse, army medical officer and church warden.
Many of Kilbourn's earliest wood engravings also depicted religious themes.
Folks interested in collecting the illustrated books of this talented engraver will want to consult the checklist put together by The Devli's Artisan, which includes an essay by Kilbourn herself.
The title below represents the most recent retrospective of her work, beginning with engravings that Kilbourn did back in the 1950s....
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