A Trove of HC Merrill Wood Engravings

“The art and trade of wood engraving are today largely a matter of history,” Hiram Campbell Merrill, age 71, said in 1937. Probably as his way of marking the transfer of wood engraving from a trade integral to the printing industry to the art form in which it is known today. For a period of seventy years, Merrill practiced his trade and creativity in prints, drawings, and paintings.

Ann Prentice Wagner, the most knowledgeable authority on Merrill, mentions him in her work “The Graver, the Brush, and the Ruling Machine: The Training of Late-Nineteenth-Century Wood Engravers”: “Hiram Merrill (1866-1958), a wood engraver whose life is well documented in the Hiram Campbell Merrill Collection of the Boston Public Library, began his career in the typical fashion with an apprenticeship of several years in an illustration firm. Two major factors urged Merrill, like so many young people in the late nineteenth century, toward a career in wood engraving: he was poor and he was interested in art. His father was a wheelwright and, as the family probably had no connection to art, Merrill is unlikely to have received any particular encouragement in that direction. Despite this, from an early age he drew from nature and dreamed of being a painter. Merrill attended drawing classes at Shephard Grammar School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a surviving report card records that he received excellent grades in drawing. Merrill summed up his situation: ‘The necessity to earn money decided me to embrace wood engraving, as I was told it was lucrative.’”

Hiran Merril in 1937, addressed

the Sociey of  Printers of Boston

Hiram Merrill was born in Boston and was 16 when he entered his apprenticeship as a wood engraver. He worked for a firm that did book illustrations. In 1890, seeking to advance in magazines and newspapers, he moved to New York City. He worked for Harpers, both their Monthly and Weekly magazines. This work was at a faster pace than in Boston. Yet he found time to take art classes, draw, and paint. In 1896 he traveled around the United States drawing and painting. In 1905 he traveled to Europe and again in 1909 to Brittany where he made studies that were material for many later paintings and engravings. Merrill often visited Vermont, where his mother was born, and where he also found material for his creativity. Merrill was awarded a bronze medal for engraving at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, 1901, and the same honor at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St Louis, 1904. Merrill died in 1958.

A print collector, Barbara Robeson, describes Merrill as “one of the highly skilled practitioners of American reproductive wood engraving that flourished at the end of the 19^th century. Late in his life and long after the demise of “reproductive wood engravings”, he embarked on a series of 50 original wood engravings created from his own designs - paintings, sketches, and photographs of his extensive travels in Europe and New England.”

"Village Store, Ryegate Vermont" 1942. Signed by the artist. 

Ryegate is the birthplace of Hiram Merrill's Mother.

We are indebted to the estate of Miss Shirley Southard who died this year in Denver, intestate and without any known family, for this peek into the art of Hiram Merrill. Among her papers were a small trove of Hiram Merrill wood engravings. In order to share these engravings, her only legacy, with the public, they are reproduced here. Southard was of New England stock, and is buried with her mother in Peacham, Vermont, which may explain the subject matter of five of her seven engravings. Southard’s collection are representative of the latter part of Merrill’s life. The first is dated 1942, when he would have been 76 years old. The most recent is dated 1951, at age 85. Five are scenes in New England; one shows his mother; and the last is a scene in Brittany. Southard was in her teens during these years. We don’t know how she acquired them as she left no notes. She might have come by them later in life through purchase, or an older relative might have acquired them, later passing them to Southard. In the 1940s, Merrill’s prints appear to have sold for as little as $10.

"My Mother, Emeline W. Merrill, 90 years old" 1944. 

Signed by the artist. 

"The Holstein Calf, Newbury, Vermont " 1945. Signed by the Artist

"The Covered Bridge, Conway, New Hampshire" 1945

Signed by the Artist

"Vermont Hills" 1950

Signed by the Artist

Title Indecipherable - Farm Scene 1951

Signed by the Artist

"Concarneau, Brittany. Fishermen's Wives" 1951

Signed by the Artist

Resources:

Merrill, Hiram Campbell, “Wood Engraving and Wood Engravers”, An Address to the Society of Printers of Boston, January, 1937

Robeson, Barbara, Website: www.flickr.com/photos/19469168@N02/4457653365, “Wood Engraving  by HC Merrill”, 2010

Wagner, Ann Prentice, “The Graver, the Brush, and the Ruling Machine: The Training of Late-Nineteenth-Century Wood Engravers”, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massechusetts, 1995

Whittles, George Howes, “Monographs on American Wood Engravers, XXIX Hiram Campbell Merrill”, The Printing Art Magazine, University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, Volume XXXII Number 6, February, 1919

Roger Doherty