Welcome to another entry in our blog post series highlighting the work of our Special Collections & University Archives student interns. This post was written by Egan Walker, USF Class of 2026. Egan shares insights from his Spring 2025 internship project in the Rare Book Room, which focused on creating an inventory and scanning a collection of prints by the American printmaker John DePol. Drawing on his background in English, Creative Writing, and Fine Arts, Egan reflects on John DePol’s distinctive style and the quiet power of his wood engravings. Thank you, Egan!
I spent this spring in the Rare Book Room with John DePol. A prolific printer and artist, DePol was born in 1913 and honed his craft steadily throughout his life. As a child, he practiced drawing, documenting New York’s West Village where he lived with his family into the 1930s. As a young man, he learned lithography, etching his experiences in Ireland and Europe during the second World War. In 1947, DePol found the work that would captivate him right up until he passed in December of 2004: wood engraving.
DePol learned printing at the L.F. White company, where his work introduced him to a circle of professional printers, providing him with a career in printing broadsides, invitations, posters, and book illustrations for an array of authors, presses, museums, and universities.
The Donohue Rare Book Room has a collection of one hundred and fourteen matted prints and a selection of loose prints, posters, and broadsides ranging from 1982 to 1997. DePol’s work is intricately detailed; the height of his engravings typically ranges from five to twenty centimeters. He printed primarily in black ink (some prints featuring additional tint block in muted shades of red, blue, or green). His work primarily depicts solemn landscapes, objects, or interiors with few or no figures (although we have a few of his portraits, which are also rather serious). The scenes are still and calm, yet embellish the modest objects of the everyday with pattern and personality.
I spent the majority of my time hands-on with the prints, measuring the size of the paper and the engravings, recording the date they were printed, and whether or not the engravings and prints were signed. With the help of our Digital Collections Librarian, Gina, I scanned the prints I had catalogued, and Gina uploaded them to Digital Collections. Now, anyone can view which specific prints we have in the collection (and search by year or title!) and then request to see them in person. Hooray for accessible archiving!
My favorite part of working with the DePol collection was learning to recognize the idiosyncrasies of a particular artist. After going through the collection, I reviewed the first few prints I measured, and immediately spotted DePol’s signature initial in an unconventional spot that I had initially missed. I noticed too that he pulled his prints from the same place nearly every time: on the lower left of each sheet lies a telltale inky smudge in the shape of an artist’s fingertip.
It is gratifying to get to know him so well over the course of the semester. Although John DePol might not be very well known in the wider artistic world, he has certainly made a dear impression on me, and I am very glad to have spent the spring with him.
If you would like to read more about DePol, check out John DePol, A Catalogue Raisonné of his Graphic Work (1935-1998), available in the Rare Book Room.
You can get a closer look at Egan’s work by viewing the digitized copies of John DePol prints in Gleeson Library’s Digital Collections. To see any Special Collections & University Archives material in person, stop by the Donohue Rare Book Room on the 3rd floor of Gleeson Library or contact us to schedule an appointment.
I had not heard of John DePol until now. Thank you for the introduction. I appreciate hearing how engaging with an artist’s work, even for the seemingly mundane task of archiving, yields the joy of discovery.