HUGHES-STANTON, Blair.

BLAIR HUGHES-STANTON
British, 1902-1981

A painter, wood engraver, draughtsman and teacher; born in London, son of painter Sir Herbert Hughes-Stanton, President of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours. He was educated at Colet Court and at thirteen joined HMS Conway the cadet School Ship. Unable to master spelling and punctuation (Dyslexic?) and after failing to get into the Royal Navy, he studied art at the Byam Shaw School in 1919-22. It was here that he met Leon Underwood and became one of the first students at the Leon Underwood School of Painting and Sculpture. Attending evening classes at first, whilst still at the Royal Academy School (1922-23) and later full time (1923-25). Under Marion Mitchell an american, who had studied wood engraving in Paris under Galanis, Hughes-Stanton was taught wood engraving. It was at Underwood’s school that he met Henry Moore and they formed a group including Eileen Agar, Gertrude Hermes and Ralph Chubb. In 1925 the group broke away from the Society of Wood Engravers and formed the English Wood Engravers Society. Exhibitions
were held annually at St. George’s Gallery. The Underwood Group had by then set up its own magazine, ‘The Island’ which only ran to 4 issues in 3 volumes. Hughes-Stanton married Gertrude Hermes in 1926. He succeeded John Maynard as head of the Gregynog Press in 1931 and with his second wife, Ida Graves, established the Gemini Press, illustrating her ‘Epithalamion’ in 1934. It was also in the 1930’s that he first introduced colour into his engravings. He won an international prize for engraving at the Venice Biennale in 1938. During the war he worked in camouflage with the Royal Engineers, afterwards he was sent to Greece (he was captured, became a POW and was shot in the face). After the war, commissions for private press books dried up and his war wound seriously affected his three dimensional vision. He found work teaching at Westminster School of Art 1947-8 and from 1948 Hughes-Stanton was a lecturer in printmaking and drawing at the Society of Wood Engravers, St. Martins and The Central School of Art. He latterly lived in Manningtree, Essex.
Exhibitions
Zwemmer Gallery 1933
Redfern Gallery
Cooling Gallery
Leicester Galleries 1954
Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts
Contemporary Fine Art Society
Whitworth Art Gallery
Royal Hibernian Academy

The Boat	The Wood Engravings of Blair Hughes-Stanton by Penelope Hughes-Stanton	Untitled
Still life	The Fugitive