Noted wood engraver and artist John Buckland Wright was born in Dunedin, New Zealand and moved to England with his widowed mother in 1908. He initially studied architecture but decided instead to pursue a career in art. He lived in Brussels during the 1920s and immersed himself in the flourishing arts community there, moving to Paris in 1929 he joined Atelier 17 under Stanley William Hayter. Returning to London in 1939 Buckland Wright taught at Camberwell and, after 1952, at the Slade School.

Buckland Wright worked primarily as a printmaker, illustrating numerous private press books. His naturally elegant style, coupled with his abiding interst in the female form, created a distinctive and sensuous style for which he was justly famous during his life and ever after. His work is represented in the collections of the Museum Meermanno in The Hague, Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Tate Gallery.