My dad, Simon Brett, who has died aged 81, was a leading wood engraver, prolific writer, curator, teacher and champion of other artists. His Wood Engraving – How to Do It (1994) remains the classic manual.
Simon was instrumental in reviving wood engraving as a fine art. Over the 60 years of his working life, he made more than 1,000 engravings, including private commissions, bookplates and independent work on themes including politics, war, ethics and religion, that stretched the boundaries of the art form. He illustrated more than 60 books, including the Folio Society’s Middlemarch, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The Legends of the Ring and Shakespeare. His intellect and passion for literature matched his meticulous technical expertise, emotional depth and imagination as an engraver.
For his prize-winning Pericles, Prince of Tyre (2011), Simon engraved more than 140 blocks, aiming to “stage the play on the page”. In 1998, he was commissioned by the Queen’s Medical Household to create a print commemorating the golden wedding anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. He served as chairman of the Society of Wood Engravers 1986-92, and in 2021 he was made an honorary member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers.
Simon was born in Windsor, Berkshire, to Bay (nee Brownell) and Antony Brett. Antony’s job as steward of St Bartholomew’s hospital in London came with a flat above the hospital’s “Hogarth Stair” – a grand staircase decorated with canvases by William Hogarth, which were an early influence on Simon, as were the surrounding bomb sites. At Ampleforth college in North Yorkshire, he was taught history by Basil (later Cardinal) Hume and drawing by the sculptor John Bunting, then went on to St Martin’s School of Art in London, where he was introduced to engraving.
Afterwards, Simon moved to Taos, New Mexico, for two years as a painter, joining his great-aunt, the painter Dorothy Brett, who lived there, then moving to France and Denmark. He returned to the UK and became an art teacher at Marlborough college, 1971-89 – former students remember his shy smile, cowboy hat and teaching that inspired many careers in the arts. By the end of the 70s he had himself given up painting to focus on engraving.
As quiet, kind and as deep as they come, he had an extraordinary talent for correspondence. I remember him at the kitchen table, without a computer, sifting through engravings for An Engraver’s Globe (2022), which collated 225 works by artists from 23 different countries.
Living with Parkinson’s from 2008 changed his engraving technique but Simon continued working until two days before his death. Parkinson’s robbed him of easy movement and speech but never of his spirit or artistic vision.
In 1974 Simon married the painter Juliet Wood, my mother. She and I survive him, as do four stepchildren and 11 grandchildren, and his sister, Vanessa.
