Lynd Ward

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Beowulf wrestles with Grendel by Lynd Ward (1933)
Beowulf wrestles with Grendel by Lynd Ward (1933)

Lynd Kendall Ward (26 June 1905 – 28 June 1985) was an American artist and storyteller, and son of Methodist minister and prominent political organizer Harry F. Ward. He illustrated some 200 juvenile and adult books. Ward worked in wood engraving, watercolor, oil, brush and ink, lithography and mezzotint.

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[edit] Life

Ward spent his childhood in Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey. When he was in the first grade, Ward discovered that his last name spelled "draw" backwards, and decided that he wanted to be an artist. He studied fine arts at Columbia Teachers' College in New York. There he met his future wife, May McNeer, and they were married shortly after their graduation in 1926. The first year of their marriage was spent in Europe, where Ward studied printmaking and book design at the National Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig, Germany. While browsing in a bookstore in Leipzig, Ward came upon a book by the Belgian engraver Franz Masereel which told a story in woodcuts. This was the spark which inspired Ward to create his first graphic novel, Gods' Man, published in October of 1929, the same week the stock market crashed. It was the first novel-length story told in wood engravings to be published in the United States. He went on to publish five graphic novels in total, of which Vertigo was the last and the most ambitious.

In addition to wood engraving, Ward also worked in watercolor, oil, brush and ink, lithography and mezzotint. Ward illustrated over a hundred children's books, several of which were collaborations with his wife, May McNeer. Starting in 1938, Ward became a frequent illustrator of the Heritage Limited Editions Club's series of classic works. He was well known for the political themes of his artwork, often addressing labor and class issues. In 1932 he founded Equinox Cooperative Press. He was a member of the Society of Illustrators, the Society of American Graphic Arts, and the National Academy of Design. He won a number of awards, including a Library of Congress Award for wood engraving, the Caldecott Medal, and a Rutgers University award for Distinguished Contribution to Children's Literature. He illustrated six Newbery Honor Medal books and two Newbery Medal books. Ward retired to his home in Reston, Virginia, in 1974. He died on June 28, 1985.

[edit] Novels in Woodcuts

Ward is known for his wordless novels told entirely through dramatic wood engravings. Ward's first work, Gods' Man (1929), uses a blend of Art Deco and Expressionist styles to tell the story of an artist's struggle with his craft, his seduction and subsequent abuse by money and power, and his escape to innocence. Ward, in employing the concept of the wordless pictorial narrative, acknowledged as his predecessors the European artists Frans Masereel and Otto Nückel. Released the week of the 1929 stock market crash, Gods' Man would continue to exert influence well beyond the Depression era, becoming an important source of inspiration for Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg.[1]


Gods' Man was the first of seven wood engraving Ward novels produced over the next eight years, including:

  • Madman's Drum (1930)
  • Wild Pilgrimage (1932)
  • Prelude to a Million Years (1933)
  • Frankenstein (1936)
  • Song Without Words (1936)
  • Vertigo (1937)

[edit] Other works

In 1930 Ward's wood engravings were used to illustrate Alec Waugh's travel book Hot Countries. His work on children's books included his 1953 Caldecott Medal winning book The Biggest Bear, and his work on Esther Forbes' Johnny Tremain.

Ward's work included an awareness of the racial injustice to be found in the United States. This is first apparent in the lynching scenes from Wild Pilgrimage and appears again in his drawings for North Star Shining: A Pictorial History of the American Negro, by Hildegarde Hoyt Swift, published in 1947. Ward uses African American characters, as well as several different Native ones in his 1973 book, The Silver Pony.

In 1972 Harry N. Abrams published Storyteller Without Words, a book that included Ward's six novels plus an assortment of his illustrations from other books. Ward himself broke his silence and wrote brief prologues to each of his works.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Allen Ginsberg, Illuminated Poems, illus, Eric Drooker (New York: Four Walls, 1996), xii

[edit] External links

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