Edward Bouverie Hoyton was born at Lewisham in south London in 1900. He studied etching under Malcolm Osborne and Stanley Anderson at Goldsmiths’ College, New Cross, south London. He was one of a small group of talented etchers of pastoral landscapes at Goldsmiths’ which included Graham Sutherland, Robin Tanner, William Larkins and Paul Drury. That group of pastoralist etchers sought inspiration in the works of William Blake, Samuel Palmer and the densely etched plates of Frederick Landseer Maur Griggs (1876-1938). One autumn day in 1924, Larkins brought in an etching by Palmer titled The Herdsman’s Cottage he had discovered in a Charing Cross Road bookshop. Encouraged by Griggs, the group then produced nostalgic, elegiac etchings of rural England. Sutherland would later recall that he considered this event to be a turning point in the group’s work. Their interest in Palmer coincided with the first important exhibition of his work at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1926. The highly influential and respected Griggs was a key figure in the British etching revival of the 1920s and 1930s, linking the world of Blake, Turner and Palmer to a younger generation of neo-Romantic artists. Hoyton’s first etchings were published by the Fine Art Society, London, in 1924. In 1926 he won the highly prestigious Prix de Rome, spent three years at the British School in Rome and travelled widely in Italy, France, Greece and Spain. In 1934 he was appointed lecturer in engraving at Leeds College of Art. In 1941 he was appointed principal of the Penzance School of Art and would retain that post until 1965. His wife, the painter Inez Estella Hoyton (1903-83) also taught there. Hoyton was responsible for bringing such talented artists as Bernard Leach, John Tunnard, Michael and David Leach and Barbara Tribe to teach there. Among his students would be June Hicks, Andrea Stokes, Doreen Allan and Jonathon X Coudrille. Hoyton remained a close friend of Graham Sutherland, who stayed with him in Cornwall during the war, whilst working as an official war artist, recording Geevor Mine. It was Hoyton who introduced Sutherland to Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo and Adrian Stokes. Alongside Dod Procter, Samuel Lamorna Birch and the Reverend Allan Wyon, Hoyton was much involved with the affairs of the Passmore Edwards Art Gallery and the Newlyn Society of Arts. He retired from teaching in 1965 and then concentrated on etchings. He was elected to the National Society (1931), the Royal Society of British Artists (1936) and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Artists (1958). Until 1981, he was Vice-President and Chairman of the St Ives Society of Artists. Hoyton also painted in oils and watercolour. He was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy. His etchings and engravings may be found in the collections of many major British and American collections, such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the British Museum, London. The Edward Bouverie Hoyton Collection was purchased by Aberystwyth University in February 2000, with the support of the MGC/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and The National Art Collections Fund. It covers Hoyton’s activities as a printmaker and spans six decades, The etchings fall into quite distinct subject groups and cover his student years (in the early 1920s), his time in Rome and the Mediterranean (1926-c.1930), Devon and the West Country (early 1930s), Yorkshire (late 1930s), his experiments with abstraction (1940s), and his return to landscape etchings of St Ives. The collection comprises 215 etchings (in some cases with several states of each, the original drawing and copper plate), six woodcuts and 66 drawings/watercolours. Amongst them many early states and rare impressions that have been inscribed or ‘touched’ with ink and paint. There are many unique items, such as the etched portraits of Graham Sutherland and Naum Gabo, and others of Mussolini and the Pope. The drawings and watercolours are either directly related to the prints, or demonstrate Hoyton’s variety of subjects and interests and his versatility in a range of media. The Bouverie Hoyton Archive consists of correspondence, photographs ands press cuttings, the largest group of letters being from Graham and Kathleen Sutherland, and material relating the Prix de Rome and the Bassett-Gray Studio. Hoyton died in 1988. Hoyton’s Head of an Old Man may be seen above.