The Life and Work of Ernest A. Pickup

• Author(s): St. John, Beverly P. and Gary A. Webb
• Series:
• Imprint: Beverly P. St. John and Gary Webb
• Publication Date: 2017-12-15
• Status: Active
• Available in Hardcover - Cloth: Price $39.95 | Buy Now

Ernest A. Pickup (1887–1970) was one of Nashville’s first commercial artists. He produced thousands of illustrations and commercial designs throughout a career that spanned over fifty years. Today he is best remembered for the fine quality of black and white woodblock prints he produced during the Depression years of the 1930s. Inspired by Thomas Hart Benton and other exponents of the Regionalism movement, his prints reflect historic places of interest in Nashville and rural scemes of nature in and around his home in Brentwood. Recently his work was included in print exhibitions at the Georgia Mususem of Art (2007) and the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art in Alabama (2008).

Little has been written on print making in Tennessee, and this catalog of Pickup’s work provides a prime source of information on this long neglected period of art history.

BEVERLY PICKUP ST. JOHN, the daughter of the artist, majored in art at Ward-Belmont College (now Belmont University). She holds an Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from Bethel College and an Honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Memphis Theological Seminary.

GARY A. WEBB received his Doctor of Jurisprudence from the Nashville School of Law. He is married to the international artist Sara Webb, and for over thirty years has worked with her and a diverse range of other artists, both in the United States and Europe.