Stanley Anderson RA (1884-1966) was a Bristol-born painter and printmaker, and an early exponent of the modern revival of line-engraving in Britain. At Goldsmith’s College he taught some of the foremost British etchers of the 1920s, including Graham Sutherland, Paul Drury and Robin Tanner. He is now best known for his series of engravings featuring traditional crafts, trades and farming practices, which were vanishing even then in the 1930s and 40s. These subjects perhaps appealed particularly to Anderson because he did not like to refer to himself as an artist, but instead aligned himself with the workers and craftsmen who, from the early 1930s onwards, were his primary subjects. He felt that the artist’s ‘job’ was not to indulge in self-expression but to do justice to his subject through a mastery of medium and technique. These highly detailed closely observed prints are a fascinating record of life and work in mid-20th century rural Britain. They reflect the artist’s scepticism about the value of progress, and his fears about man’s estrangement from nature, as well as the loss of respect for physical labour and craft skills.

Purbeck stone and marble were quarried in the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset.