Laurence was born in London, England in 1914 and immigrated with his family to Canada in 1926. Laurence studied art under Thoreau MacDonald and was a protégé of Carl Schaefer, benefiting greatly from his earlier demonstrations of wood engraving. He worked primarily from his imagination rather than directly from nature.Hyde’s wood engravings are in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the McMichael Canadian Collection, the Library of Congress in Washington, the Art Gallery of Ontario and various other national galleries across Canada. He exhibited in the New York World’s fair in 1939 and he has illustrated many books with his wood engravings such as: Macbeth, A Pocketful of Canada, Southern Cross, War and Peace, etc.
