Sydney Lee Biography

Sydney Lee RA (1866-1949) was a British wood engraver, active at the beginning of the twentieth century. He was a founder member of the Society of Wood Engravers (1920). He was also a painter in oils and a Royal Academician.

Sydney Lee was born on 27 August 1866 in Manchester. He spent time in his father's mills, then enrolled at the Manchester School of Art, studying sculpture and relief modelling, and became interested in printmaking using metal and wood. He then studied under Walter Crane, who encouraged Lee's interest in Japanese prints. In 1892 Lee moved to London in 1893 and married Edith Mary Elgar; the couple had no children. After their extended honeymoon in Italy, Lee enrolled in 1894 at the Académie Colarossi in Paris.

In 1895 he and his wife settled in Holland Park Road, London. Lee exhibited his first painting at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1900 and frequently thereafter. From 1903 he exhibited at the New English Art Club, of which he was a member from 1906 to 1920. In 1905 he was elected an associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers, becoming a fellow in 1915. Lee was also an active member of the Society of Graver-Printers in Colour. From 1906 he taught wood-engraving at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London.

After the First World War Lee helped establish the Society of Wood Engravers, founded in 1920. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1922, and a full Royal Academician in 1930. He served as the Academy's treasurer from 1932 to 1940. In an election for the Society's president in December 1938 he was defeated by a narrow majority of two votes in favour of the architect Edwin Lutyens. In 1934 Lee became a member of the Council of Art and Industry.

He died in London on 31 October 1949, his widow Edith died in 1952.