Timothy Cole

Portrait of Timothy Cole.

Wood engraving of Cole making a wood engraving

Timothy Cole (1852 – 17 May, 1931)^[1] was an American wood engraver.^[2]

Biography

Born in London, England, his family emigrated to the United States in 1858.

He established himself in Chicago,^[3] where in the great fire of 1871 he lost everything he possessed. In 1875 he moved to New York City, finding work on the Century (then Scribners) magazine.^[4][5] Cole was associated with the magazine for 40 years as a pioneer craftsman of wood engraving. ^[6]

He immediately attracted attention by his unusual facility and his sympathetic interpretation of illustrations and pictures, and his publishers sent him abroad in 1883 to engrave a set of blocks after the old masters in the European galleries. These achieved for him a brilliant success. His reproductions of Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Flemish and English pictures were published in book form with appreciative notes by the engraver himself. Old Dutch and Flemish Masters was one of the books that Cole had contributed his wood engravings.^[7]

Though the advent of new mechanical processes had rendered wood engraving almost a lost art and left practically no demand for the work of such craftsmen, Mr Cole was thus enabled to continue his work, and became one of the foremost contemporary masters of wood engraving. He received a medal of the first class at the Paris Exhibition of 1900, and the only grand prize given for wood engraving at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St Louis, Missouri, in 1904. In 1906 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician, and became a full Academician in 1908.

His son, Alphaeus Philemon Cole, was a noted portraitist who is also today recognized for having lived to be the oldest verified man in the world.

Works

• (1888). Old Italian Masters.
• (1895). Old Dutch and Flemish Masters.
• (1901). Old Spanish Masters.
• (1902). Old English Masters.
• (1921). Considerations on Engraving.
• (1925). Art by the Way.

Bibliography

• Anon (1911). "Timothy Cole: A Biographical Note", The Print Collector’s Quarterly, Vol 1, No. 3, p. 344.
• Cary, Elisabeth Luther (1911). "Timothy Cole and Henry Wolf: Two Masters of Modern Wood-Engraving," The Print Collector’s Quarterly, Vol 1, No. 3, p. 319.
• Cole, Timothy (1911). "Some Difficulties of Wood-Engraving," The Print Collector’s Quarterly, Vol 1, No. 3, p. 335.
• Robert Underwood, Johnson (1918). "Timothy Cole," The Art World, Vol. 3, No. 5, p. 376.

References

1. "Timothy Cole Dies", The New York Times, May 18, 1931.
2. Whittle, George Howes (1918). "The Art of Timothy Cole," The Art World, Vol. 3, No. 5, pp. 377-383.
3. Cole, Alphaeus Philemon & Margaret Ward Walmsley Cole (1935). Timothy Cole: Wood-engraver. The Pioneer Associates, p. 5.
4. "Timothy Cole," The Art World, Vol. 1, No. 1, Oct., 1916, p. 13.
5. Sabine, Julia (1952). "Timothy Cole and the 'Century'," The Library Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 232-239.
6. "Timothy Cole". Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2 October 2013.
7. "Timothy Cole". Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2 October 2013.

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "^{article name needed}". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

External links

• Works by or about Timothy Cole at Internet Archive
• Works by Timothy Cole, at Unz.org
• www.artistarchive.com A catalogue of over 550 prints by Cole, some with images.