The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (518 page)

wood engraving
.

Term applied to the technique of making a print from a block of hardwood (usually boxwood) sawn across the grain and to the print so made. It derives from the
woodcut
, but because of the harder and smoother surface and the use of the
burin
and other tools associated with the copperplate engraver, the effect is generally finer and more detailed (although there is a middle ground where the two techniques produce very similar results). Wood engraving developed in the 18th cent. and its first great exponent was Thomas
Bewick
(his contemporary William
Blake
also made some superb wood engravings, but these were little known at the time). Bewick ushered in the technique's heyday, which coincided with a great expansion in journalism and book publishing from about 1830. From then until about 1890, when it was superseded by photo-mechanical processes, it was the most popular medium for illustration. The
Dalziel brothers
and Gustave
Doré
were among the most prolific exponents during this period.

 
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(1825–92)
. English sculptor, the only sculptor member of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
. His early career was unsuccessful, so he decided to try his hand at gold-prospecting in Australia. His departure in 1852 inspired Ford Madox
Brown's
picture
The Last of England
(City Art Gallery, Birmingham, 1852–5). Woolner found little gold, but he began to prosper as a portrait sculptor, and after returning to England made a name for himself with his marble bust of Alfred Tennyson of 1857 (Trinity College, Cambridge, and replicas in Westminster Abbey and the NPG). His work was praised for its lifelikeness and he did portraits of many other distinguished sitters. Woolner also did a few figure subjects, occasionally painted, and wrote poetry.

 
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(
c.
1682–1764).
English landscape and sporting painter. He specialized very successfully in horse subjects, but his main contribution to British painting was the introduction of the
ideal
landscape—Horace
Walpole
said his works in this vein ‘approached towards Gaspar Poussin [i.e.
Dughet
], and sometimes imitated happily the glow of
Claude Lorrain
’. His landscape manner was continued by his pupil George
Lambert
.

 
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World of Art
(Mir Iskusstva)
.

The name of an informal association of Russian artists and of the journal they published from 1899 to 1904; the association was formed in St Petersburg in 1898 and lasted, with interruptions, until 1924, but its heyday was over long before this.
Diaghilev
was the journal's editor, and his contributors and collaborators included Léon
Bakst
and Alexander
Benois
. The group encouraged interchange with Western art (many articles published in the journal had previously appeared in European magazines) and became the focus for avant-garde developments in Russia. In particular it promoted the
Art Nouveau
style. Some of the artists involved in the group (notably Nikolai
Roerich
) were also interested in evoking the spirit of ancient Russia, and this synthesis of old and new was best expressed in their decor for Diaghilev's ballet company, which revolutionized European stage design when he brought it to Paris.

 
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Worpswede
.

A north German village near Bremen that in the last decade of the 19th cent. became the centre of a group of artists who settled there, following the example of the
Barbizon School
in France. The most famous artist to work there was Paula
Modersohn-Becker
, and the ‘Worpswede School’ is sometimes regarded as one of the roots from which German
Expressionism
sprang.

 
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