Reid, James: The Life of Christ in Woodcuts

1st Edition.

James Reid’s only wordless publication, The Life of Christ in Woodcuts, with 78 wood engravings, illustrates highlights from the New Testament scripture.

This woodcut novel, by James Reid, a Philadelphia illustrator of children’s books, depicts the biblical life of Christ rendered with traditional themes and charac­ters that are immediately recognized by readers famil­iar with Christian culture. This traditional approach was far from the intense and unconventional artistic tone of the time, expressed by artists like Georges Rouault, whose series of paintings called Miserere (1914-27) exhibited an Expressionist and primitive feeling for Christ the Messiah. Historically, the connection of the life of Christ presented in Reid’s woodcuts has a similarity to the early fifteenth-century depiction of the gospels in woodcuts.

In a modern, artistic half-cloth binding.