Stanley Anderson (artist)

Alfred Charles Stanley Anderson CBE RA (11 May 1884 – 4 March 1966) was a British engraver, etcher and watercolour painter.

Anderson was principally known for the series of highly detailed engravings of traditional British crafts that he completed over a twenty-year period beginning in 1933.

[1] This can be seen in Wreckage (1922),[6] By-Products (1922),[7] in the tramp-like figures lounging in The National Gallery (1925),[8] and in the flute playing busker in Pan in Fulham (1932).

The scene depicts two men having a discussion in a library reading room, where newspapers may be consulted for nothing by those that cannot afford to buy their own copy.

On the facing page is an image of a child's stick drawing, referring to Read's interest in the art of children, and a crude Picassoesque portrait.

This page includes images of weapons of war, people in gas-masks, a bishop blessing soldiers, a worker and a top-hatted boss on their knees praying before machinery in the shape of a £ sign, and a march of the unemployed.

[10] In 1933, Anderson bought a cottage ("Old Timbers") in Towersey, near Thame, Oxfordshire, and began producing the engravings of country crafts for which he is best known.

[11] The Lacemaker, for instance, was based on studies of Dorcas Ing (aged 87 at the time) of Long Crendon near Thame made in 1939.

Work for the Timms began to decline after World War Two so in 1947 they entered a competition for blacksmiths run by the Royal Agricultural Society of England who aimed to revive rural crafts.

He engraved his last plate in 1953 and thereafter concentrated on watercolour paintings of country scenes which were sold at the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Humphrey Brooke, secretary to the Royal Academy until 1968, recalled in The Times that there was a "stampede" each year to buy Anderson's paintings which often sold out within minutes of the opening, one collector being seen in running shoes to beat the competition.

[12] The exhibition, An Abiding Standard: The Prints of Stanley Anderson RA, curated by Professor Robert Meyrick and Dr Harry Heuser ran at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, 25 February – 24 May 2015.

[13][14] Material relating to Stanley Anderson may be found in the James Laver and Harold Wright collections at the University of Glasgow.