‘From one woodpecker to another'

Ariane Bankes is delighted that a little–known contemporary of Bawden and Ravilious has been brought out of the shadows

The rediscovery of an artist whose talent has long been lost to the world is a rare and exciting event. Suzanne Cooper is one such artist. Despite her startling early promise, we have only a modest number of works to remember her by, but these have now been brought together to receive their due in a revelatory show.

Brought up in Frinton on the Essex coast, in 1935 Cooper enrolled at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in Pimlico, London, aged 19. This appealing-sounding institution had been established in 1925 by the Scottish wood-engraver and painter Iain Macnab, in his house in Warwick Square. Its students were allowed a remarkable degree of freedom, choosing between life drawing, the study of modern art (the critic Frank Rutter taught a course ‘From Cézanne to Picasso’), classes in composition and design, or dancing, taught by Macnab’s wife Helen Wingrave. The 1920s were a golden age for wood engraving, with initiatives such as St Dominic’s and the Golden Cockerell Presses, and Iain Macnab was one of the pioneers. his own incisive and dynamic linear style was taken up by students including Sybil Andrews and Cyril Power, and adapted to lino-cut with well-known results.