Sam Haile (1909 - 1948)

Wood engraving
25.5 x 25.5 cm
Unknown edition

Provenance
Marianne Haile
Birch & Conran Fine Art, London (label verso)
Derek Jarman
Richard Salmon Gallery, London (label verso)

Sam Haile’s career as a printmaker was short lived, yet he showed a remarkable affinity with wood engraving. After leaving school at fifteen he worked on series of menial jobs while taking art classes in the evenings at Clapham School of Art. It was there that he first gained recognition in 1931 winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. Haile’s woodcuts were produced during his first year at the RCA, a period in which he experimented with a range of artistic forms. His brief flirtation with printmaking came to an end when he began studying under William Staite Murray in the pottery department.

After gaining considerable attention as a ceramicist, Haile would return to painting, embedding himself in the British surrealist movement of the late 1930s and 40s. Printmaking remains an unheralded part of Haile’s body of work. Rare in their numbers, it is impossible to know how many he produced in his short life. Delicate and finely detailed, these works depict figures captured in the middle of everyday scenes, some as simple as hanging washing and others seemingly caught at the edge of a moment of intimacy.