Heywood Sumner (1853 - 1940)

A member of the British Arts and Crafts group with a particular fondness for history and its impact on the environment. He developed from a rather embarrassing admiration for William Blake, to a straightforward and deceptively drawn illustrative style. One saving grace was an early identification with the archaelogical exactitudes of legends and myth. In his drawings for The New Forest and Stonehenge , he achieves a real sense of place, and a decorative drawing style that sits well with the need to record what is there. At his best he can achieve the true intimacy of Edward Calvert with heavy rhythmic lines.

SEE WORK FOR THE ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE
 

IMAGES FROM
 
images from The New Forest ,published by Charles Brown & Son, Ringwood 1925 (1st ed 1924) 16 x 24 cms, and typical of the Sumner painstaking approach. As you would expect from an artist with Arts and Crafts associations, he pays close attention to neat and legible letterforms.
 
 
from The Ancient Earthworks of the New Forest , Notable Barrows; `Chiswick Press London 1917; a typically stolid and dense drawing style, capably combining image and text, plainly by the same hand. Sumner's guide books can still be found around in shops.

from Frank Stevens' Stonehenge Today and Yesterday , HMSO London 1937 (revised edition) the frontIspiece, 12 x 18 cms

from Frank Stevens' Stonehenge Today and Yesterday, HMSO London 1937 (revised edition) the illustration to the chapter What is Stonehenge ? 12 x 18 cms