Roebuck - Artist Printmaker-Painter

Lynne Roebuck is a fine artist specialising in limited edition original prints living and working in Yorkshire, UK, where the surname 'Roebuck' originates.

Robuc, Robuk, Robuck, Robuke - Roebuck.

Some of the earliest records of the name are written 'Robuc' though there are many variations such as Robuk, Roebuk, Rubuk, Robuck, Robucke, Rowbuck and Rowebuck. Lynne has had letters addressed to Roebook, Robook, Rosebook or Rosebuck amongst other spellings as even today the name proves a spelling test.

The sign in the image points up to old stone workings on the top of the moor, where Lynnes stone quarry men ancestors are likely to have worked. To the right we're looking down into Yorkshire, over the location of dwellings where archives show they lived in the early 1800s, now also lost in the heather.

Records locate the Roebuck surname in the county of Yorkshire, where the first known instance of the name occur. The surname is thought to originate from some association with the native deer species, the Roe, which is still seen in the quieter parts of the county today. Indeed, Lynne has watched in appreciation, as a resident wild Roe deer herd wondered across the open farmland where she grew up on a regular basis - as they still do. It is suggested by some that the bearers of the name were hunters, or poachers, of some repute. Lynne feels some doubt about this given the surname did not simultaneously occur anywhere else in the UK though the Roe deer was countrywide. When surveyed informally by the artist herself, in the late 1980's, the surname was still largely unrepresented in most other counties in the UK - a number of counties in the South of England particularly had no Roebucks listed at all, not one.

Lynne Roebucks own ancestry traces back to the moors in the West Riding, where the long ago abandoned stone quarries her ancestors worked in and the long lost hamlets they lived in are now barely discernible beneath the heather. The only things remaining are an unusable track and a small Chapel with several ancestral Roebuck graves. Indeed, only her ancestors remains and some distant relatives remain there as both herself and her immediate family now live in North Yorkshire.

Perhaps with these roots, it's little surprise that Lynne's inspired by the landscape.

Lynne Roebuck produces relief prints using lino and is established in a number of galleries.