Newcastle University

Bewick as Tutor and Moral Guardian

Under Bewick's expert eye, the engraving business prospered and with more business came the need to employ more apprentices. Bewick's attitude toward his pupils was paradoxical at best; he seems to have enjoyed teaching the young men new skills, but he objected to working with those that did not share his outlook on life. Indeed, Bewick appeared to have regretted 'wasting' his time on 'useless and wicked pupils.'

Nevertheless, under Bewick's expert tutelage the workshop produced a number of excellent engravers and artist-craftsmen over the years including William Harvey, Charlton Nesbit and Luke Clennell.

Bewick was a strong believer in education and self-improvement and he developed his ideas in a number of small books on education and moral instruction. In his memoir, Bewick underscores the important role of education for children and the social utility of the printed book and the artist-craftsman:


After returning to Newcastle from London in June 1776, Bewick reluctantly entered into a partnership with his old employer, Ralph Beilby. He was now a master-craftsman and as such Bewick engaged his younger brother John as his very first apprentice. They worked well together and produced a number of high quality designs including those for Select Fables (1784) and Somerville's Chase (1796), which contained cuts by both John and Thomas.

One of the most interesting and unusual books for which both Thomas and John Bewick provided cuts is Hans Holbein's Emblem's of Mortality (1789). The book is based on an antique religious ceremony in which people from all walks of life were gathered together in a church to dance. During the course of the dance, each person in turn would vanish from the scene, thereby showing that no one was exempt from the inevitability of death. The text was later republished as The Dance of Death in 1825.

Bewick was a devout man whose strong beliefs in God, hard work, virtue and patriotism were the guiding principles by which he lived by, yet, he “never could be religious at church.” Little wonder then that Bewick sought to convey the lessons of the scriptures by alternative means. The long sub-title is strongly suggestive of Bewick's ambitions as an artist and a man.