Henry Evans (1918-1990) American, Two Linoleum Block Botanical Prints. "IRIS," 1978, #68/225, and "EUCALYPTUS," 1973, #28/201. Hand signed, dated, numbered and titled in pencil along bottoms. 

Overall: (each) 23 X 28 3/4 in. 

Sight: (each) 19 X 12 in. 

#3842 . 

Henry Herman Evans was born in Superior, Wisconsin on May 16th, 1918. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, the City College of San Francisco, San Francisco State College, and the University of Arizona, absorbing as much as he could about art, business, and commerce. Evans opened his first bookstore, Porpoise Book Shop, in Tucson, Arizona in 1942, but relocated to San Francisco in 1944. In 1949 he purchased an 1852 Washington Hand Press, and began producing letterpress books as Peregrine Press. Evans began to cut linoleum blocks as an experiment to understand the best way to print the works of local artists. This led him to start making art of his own in 1958, depicting some 1,400 botanical subjects over 31 years. In that time, he held more than 250 solo shows in many countries around the world and in almost every state. In 1964 he closed Peregrine Press to focus solely on his own work, writing and illustrating books and magazine articles, giving thousands of lectures on printmaking, and, along with his wife, Marsha, opening galleries in the Napa Valley and San Francisco in the late 1960s. From 1974 onward, Marsha worked on shows and gallery arrangements and did most of the presswork on the prints, allowing Evans to fully focus on selecting the subjects, making the drawings, cutting the blocks, and mixing the colors. He printed several books and portfolios, including The State Flowers of the United States in 1972, Botanical Prints: With Excerpts from the Artist’s Notebooks in 1977, and California Native Wildflowers in  1985. Evans drew directly from living subjects, and all were portrayed life-size. He used linoleum as a printing surface, and made every single piece by hand. Each linoleum-block print was numbered, dated, and signed by the artist. After printing, the blocks were destroyed, making his final output even more impressive, as each item run was printed only once. Evans’s linocuts are found in the collections of the Albertina in Vienna, Austria, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the New York Public Library. His work can be seen in countless museums and libraries across the country; and in numerous private collections all across the globe. Evans died at his home in Saint Helena, California on March 30th, 1990.