Animal grace: Norbertine Bresslern Roth

Norbertine Bresslern-Roth was born Norbertine Roth in Graz, Austria, in 1891, Bresslern-Roth was one of the pre-eminent linocut artists of the twentieth century, and one of the first to truly explore the possibilities of the medium. Her work had a profound influence on later linocut artists such as Lill Tschudi, while her own choice of subjects (chiefly animals and birds) and compositional style were influenced by the art of L. H. Jungnickel. Charles at Modern Printmakers has an excellent post on Bresslern-Roth, in which he is slightly dismissive of her as essentially an imitator of Ludwig Jungnickel, and while I think it is true that she derived a great deal from him, I do believe her work has its own strengths. Pre-eminent among these is her ability to capture a sense of motion and energy in a static image. "Kampf", her energetic depiction of a fight-to-the-death between a lobster and an octopus is a striking case in point.

Norbertine Bresslern-Roth, Kampf

Linocut, 1923

Bresslern-Roth studied under Alfred von Schrötter at the Graz Academy, then under Ferdinand Schmutzer at the Vienna Academy, and finally at Hans Hajek's school for animal painting in Dachau. Norbertine Bresslern-Roth then returned to Graz, where she lived for the rest of her life. Although she had exhibited with the Vienna Secession from 1912, Norbertine Bresslern-Roth essentially stood aside from the artistic currents of her time. A trip to North Africa in 1928 profoundly influenced her subsequent subject matter and colouring. Her linocuts are very richly inked, and the colours positively glisten from the page. My other prints by, or after, Bresslern-Roth are a series of these linocuts reproduced as lithographic facsimiles. In these, the colours, while true, have a dusty feel in comparison to  the glowing quality of the original linocuts. But they are still powerful and attractive, and I add some to this post to give a more balanced view of her output than "Kampf" alone. The lithographs were made for the book Linolschnitte von Norbertine Bresslern-Roth by Alphons Poller (1926). Bresslern-Roth evidently authorized them, but how closely she was involved beyond that is not clear. Quite probably she would have approved the proofs.

Norbertine Bresslern-Roth, Baviane

Lithograph after a linocut, 1926

Norbertine Bresslern-Roth, Feuersalamander

Lithograph after a linocut, 1926

Norbertine Bresslern-Roth, Fischer

Lithograph after a linocut, 1926

Norbertine Bresslern-Roth, Flucht

Lithograph after a linocut, 1926

Norbertine Bresslern-Roth, Galago

Lithograph after a linocut, 1926

Norbertine Bresslern-Roth, Reiher

Lithograph after a linocut, 1926

Norbertine Bresslern-Roth, Überfall

Lithograph after a linocut, 1926

Norbertine Bresslern-Roth, Ura

Lithograph after a linocut, 1926

Norbertine Bresslern-Roth, Urishirsche

Lithograph after a linocut, 1926

Although she lived until 1978, Norbertine Bresslern-Roth's era was the 1920s and 30s. In 1930, for instance, she was selected as the subject of the seventh monograph in the series Masters of the Colour Print edited by Malcolm C. Salaman and published by The Studio. As well as Salaman's rather gushing text, this had eight tipped-in colour plates (screened four-colour reproductions). This was probably the high point of her international fame, though her art has come back into focus recently through the close attention paid to it in the blogs Modern Printmakers and Art and the Aesthete.

Pierre Dubreuil and Hans Gött: two pupils of Henri Matisse

While most of Henri Matisse's close relationships with other artists were as friend and colleague, sharing ideas and going on joint painting expeditions (for instance in Collioure with Derain in 1906, in Tangier with Marquet and Camoin in 1912, in La Goulette with Étienne Bouchaud in 1926), he also had various formal and informal master-pupil relationships. Most notably, between 1908 and 1912 he ran the Académie Matisse. Many of the students there were Scandinavian, of whom the stars were Sigrid Hjertén, Isaac Grünewald and Per Krohg, but there were also Americans (Max Weber, Alfred Maurer), Germans (Hans Purrmann) and even Britons (Matthew Smith). At this time Matisse had much more respect internationally than he commanded at home, and there was a notable lack of French students at the Académie Matisse. One young French artist who did attend was Pierre Dubreuil. I'm prompted to write about him because of the almost simultaneous acquisition of his engraving Sarah la baigneuse, and the etching Schlafendes Mädchen by Hans Gött. Two sensuous reclining nudes, both resonating with Matisse's vision of an art of luxe, calme, et volupté. Gött was not a student at the Académie Matisse, but instead benefited from informal lessons in Matisse's atelier in 1919.

Pierre Dubreuil, Sarah la baigneuse

Engraving, 1930

Pierre Dubreuil was born in Quimper, Brittany, in 1891. After initial studies in Vannes, and three months at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Dubreuil entered the Académie Matisse in 1908, and remained there until Matisse dissolved the school in spring 1912. His artistic career was stalled by World War One. First military service and then war mobilization stole seven years from his artistic development. Dubreuil did not exhibit until 1921, after which he was a regular at the Salons des Artistes Indépendants, d'Automne, and des Tuileries. As a printmaker, his preferred medium was the copper engraving, though he also produced drypoints, etchings, and wood engravings. He was president of the Société des Peintres-Graveurs Français, and a member of the Peintres-Graveurs Indépendants.

Pierre Dubreuil, On n'est pas heureux qu'avec une bonne femme 

Engraving, 1930

As well as painting and printmaking, Pierre Dubreuil painted murals and designed tapestries, and illustrated a number of books, including works by Restif de la Bretonne, Paul Valéry, Hugues Rebell, and Henri de Regnier. Alongside Matisse, he contributed original prints to the two great collaborative livres d'artiste of the 1930s and 40s, Paris 1937 and Alternance.

Pierre Dubreuil, La Double Maîtresse

Wood engraving, 1930

In 1944 Dubreuil illustrated La Nichina, a novel by the dissolute Hugues Rebell about a sixteenth-century Venetian courtisan, with numerous engravings. The book was published in a fairly large edition of 970 copies, of which 930 were on vélin de Rives, and 40 on vergé de Hollande. The 40 on Hollande laid paper also had a supplementary suite of the engravings, printed in sanguine on china paper. The engravings were printed by Paul Haasen.

Pierre Dubreuil, La Nichina (reclining)

Engraving, 1944

Examples in sanguine on chine and in black on vergé de Hollande

Pierre Dubreuil, Venice, Campanile di San Marco

Engraving, 1944

Pierre Dubreuil, Venice

Engraving, 1944

Pierre Dubreuil, Au soleil levant

Engraving, 1944

Pierre Dubreuil, Filles déguisées en page

Engraving, 1944

Pierre Dubreuil died in Paris in 1970. In 1991 J.-P. Zingg published the first monograph on his work, Pierre Dubreuil. Female bathers were one of his most consistent themes, culminating in a series of paintings between 1941 and 1957 of nude bathers discreetly shadowed beneath trees.

Hans Gött, Schlafendes Mädchen

Etching, 1924

Hans Gött (sometimes spelled Hanns Gött) was born in 1883. He is known as a painter of women, especially nudes and intimate portraits in domestic settings. This is not surprising as, after studying at the Munich Academy, Hans Gött went to Paris in 1919 to study in the atelier of Henri Matisse, whose work remained a strong influence on Gött's art.

Hans Gött, Ars Amatoria I (Romulus with a Sabine woman)

Lithograph, 1920

Hans Gött, Ars Amatoria II (Pasiphae and the bull)

Lithograph, 1920

Hans Gött, Ars Amatoria IV (Daedalus and Icarus)

Lithograph, 1920

Hans Gött, Ars Amatoria VII (Lovers)

Lithograph, 1920

Hans Gött, Remedia Amoris II (Phyllis)

Lithograph, 1920

As a printmaker, Hans Gött worked in both etching and lithography. Among his lithographs are ten made for an edition of Ovid's Ars Amatoria published in 1920; on the title page the artist is credited as Hanns Gött. These witty lithographs show the influence of Matisse's line, though in my view they are too much in thrall to line, and make poor use of lithography's tonal effects. It's as if the artist was expecting to illustrate the text in etching. Hans Gött lived and worked in Munich, and died in 1973.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir as a book illustrator

In 1878, the publishers C. Marpon and E. Flammarion published a lavishly illustrated edition of Émile Zola’s novel L’Assommoir. The title page had a wood engraving of the central character Gervaise by Fortuné Louis Méaulle after a drawing by André Gill, but no other indication of the treasure trove of art to be found within. In fact half a dozen engravers had been kept busy interpreting illustrations by a gallery of artists, including Gill, Norbert Goeneutte, Frédéric Regamey, Henri Gervex, Daniel Vierge, Maurice Leloir, Georges Bellenger, and François Feyen-Perrin. There are 62 plates in all, and four of them are by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

La descente des ouvriers

Wood engraving by Fortuné Méaulle after Norbert Goeneutte, 1878

I don’t know who the publishers engaged to art direct this complex illustrated book, but my hunch would be Regamey, the former art director of the 1870s journal Paris à l’eau-forte, to which many of these artists (though not Renoir) had contributed. I suspect the inspiration for the curious mixture of artists and styles came from the 1876 edition of Léon Cladel’s Les Va-nu-pieds, which was published by Richard Lesclide’s Librairie de l’eau-forte. This was originally announced to be illustrated with etchings by André Gill, but in the end it was illustrated with wood engravings after Gill, Regamey, Vierge, Guérard, Somm, and various other contributors to Paris à l’eau-forte. It appears that Marpon and Flammarion liked the idea of issuing novels in serial parts, using multiple illustrators in this way (although to my mind it produces in the end a book with little visual cohesion or integrity), and they proceeded to issue similar illustrated editions of various Zola novels. So far as I know, Renoir only contributed to L’Assommoir. He probably agreed to the commission because of his friendship with Zola. According to this article Zola was involved in selecting the artists, and personally approached Renoir. Renoir also owed a debt of friendship and gratitude to the original publisher of L’Assommoir, Georges Charpentier.

La Loge des Boche

Wood engraving after Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1878

130 copies were printed on handmade Hollande wove paper, each containing an additional suite of the illustrations printed on china paper; these rare copies are now immensely sought-after. But there was also a trade edition on ordinary book-wove paper. This cheap paper has not stood the test of time very well, and many copies of the ordinary edition have browned and foxed. But I have been lucky enough to find a copy in which the pages are clean and fresh.

Lantier et Gervaise passèrent une très-agréable soirée au café-concert

Wood engraving by Henri Paillard after Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1878

Renoir’s four plates are of varying quality, I think. “Lantier et Gervaise passèrent une très-agréable soirée au café-concert”, which is signed A.R. in the bottom left of the block, and was engraved by Henri Paillard, is the most successful to my eyes. The subject-matter is perfect for Renoir, and the whole scene is brimming with life.

Les filles d’ouvriers se promenant sur le boulevard extérieur

Wood engraving after Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1878

“Les filles d’ouvriers se promenant sur le boulevard extérieur” is also very atmospheric. It bears the signature Renoir, again in the bottom left, but there is no indication as the identity of the engraver. The original drawing in pen and brown ink over black chalk is in the Regenstein Collection in the Art Institute of Chicago. The author of the note on it in the Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies declares it “one of the most important drawings the artist produced during the years of high Impressionism.” A long-lost earlier version of the same composition, annotated by Zola, was discovered in an office safe in 2003, and sold at auction for £106,750.

Le père Bru piétinait dans la neige pour se réchauffer

Wood engraving after Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1878

The other two illustrations don’t seem to me to reach the same high standard. Each has its Impressionistic charm, one a cramped interior, the other a shivery exterior, but in both cases Renoir, unused to creating drawings for reproduction, has introduced so much cross-hatching that the effect is very dark, and a little confused. It’s interesting to me that in only one case of the four is the engraver credited, and that plate is, for me, much the most successful; the engraver, Paillard, was himself a noted artist. Although all the illustrations are always described as wood engravings, I passingly wondered if the other three Renoirs, and a few of the other images where no engraver is credited (such as Regamey’s "Gervaise et Coupeau", and Goeneutte’s "L’atelier de fleuristes"), might possibly be reproduced by some other process, such as Gillotage (a form of photolithography using zinc plates). It's very hard to say for sure. But I think on the whole that they probably are wood engravings - certainly, there is more detail in the published plate of Renoir's "Les filles d'ouvriers..." than there is in either of the two drawings, and all the images are reproduced purely in line, with no tone.

Below are just a few of the other illustrations to this edition of L’Assommoir, to indicate the range of talents at work on this project.

La bataille de Gervaise et Virginie

Wood engraving by Eugène Froment after André Gill, 1878

Gervaise et Coupeau, l’ouvrier zingueur, mangeaient ensemble une prune à l’Assommoir

Wood engraving after Frédéric Regamey, 1878

Les Lorilleux travaillant l’or

Wood engraving by Clément Bellenger after Georges Bellenger, 1878

Ça ne vous empêchera pas d’y passer, ma petite

Wood engraving by Albert Bellenger, 1878

L’accident du coupeau

Wood engraving by Jules Léon Perrichon after Alfred Garmer, 1878

Ce fut le zingeuer qui força Lantier à entrer

Wood engraving by Alfred Kemplen after Maurice Leloir, 1878

L’atelier de fleuristes

Wood engraving after Norbert Goeneutte, 1878

Gervaise lavant par terre dans la boutique de confiserie

Wood engraving by Fortuné Méaulle after Alexandre Auguste Rosé, 1878

Les femmes attendant la paye à la port de l’atelier

Wood engraving by Clément Bellenger after Daniel Vierge, 1878

Max Pollak: Portrait of Maria Ley

Max Pollak was born in Prague in 1886. He grew up in Vienna, where he studied printmaking under William Unger and Ferdinand Schmutzer. He won the Prix de Rome for his etchings in 1910. In WWI Pollak was an official war artist for the Austrian army. After spending three years in Paris, in 1927 Max Pollak emigrated to the United States, settling in San Francisco, where he lived for the rest of his life. He was a member of the California Society of Etchers (winning their award in 1942, 1944, and 1945) and of the Chicago Society of Etchers (winning their award in 1942). In his American years Pollak etched scenes in Mexico and Central America, as well as California. Brilliant and accomplished as these etchings are, it is generally thought that his work in Vienna and Paris is his finest, most particularly the sensuous portraits he etched of dancers such as Maria Ley, Kitty Starling, Ronny Johansson, and Isa Marsen. These are triumphant examples of movement captured in a still image, etched in Max Pollak's typical manner with the image mainly or completely incised with a drypoint needle and the colour hand-applied to the plate for each impression, à la poupée.

Max Pollak, Maria Ley

Drypoint, 1924

Like Max Pollak, the subject of this drypoint Maria Ley emigrated to the United States, where she was known as Maria Ley-Piscator. Maria and her husband Erwin Piscator (a colleague and close friend of Bertolt Brecht) founded the Dramatic Workshop at the New School for Social Research. Among their pupils were Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte, Walter Matthau, Tennessee Williams, and Tony Randall.

New York Etching Club: Frederick W. Freer

The painter and etcher Frederick Warren Freer was born in 1849 in Kennicott's Grove, Illinois, now part of Chicago. He studied art in Chicago before attending the Munich Academy under Wagner and Diez. Well-respected in his own day, Freer seems to be largely forgotten now, but I rank him among the most interesting of the New York Etching Club artists.

Frederick W. Freer, At Polling

Etching, 1888

My only print by Frederick W. Freer is an evocative and tranquil scene in Polling, Bavaria, where Freer joined Frank Duveneck and his students in the summer of 1879. It is executed largely in drypoint, with great subtlety of tone. So far as I can tell Freer's preferred subjects in his paintings were intimate interiors with a mother and child, using his own wife and children as models, but he also painted landscapes. Freer returned to the USA in 1880, living in New York until 1890 when he returned to Chicago to become President of the Chicago Academy of Design. He died in Chicago in 1908.

Quiet reflections: the etchings of Ferdinand Schmutzer

The painter, printmaker, and photographer Ferdinand Schmutzer is little-known today, yet his work, which focuses on moments of quiet thought and reflection, has a rare intimacy.

Ferdinand Schmutzer, Tagesneuigkeiten (The Day's News)

Etching, 1908

Even when he depicts a crowd scene, as in his etching of poor citizens of Vienna crowding in a soup line outside a monastery or convent, there is no sense of jostling or hubbub; instead one senses the silent resignation of people too tired to make much noise. This etching, the smaller of two versions of the same scene, is my favourite among the five etchings I possess by Ferdinand Schmutzer. It shows him able to tackle a really complex composition with great finesse, and it also beautifully demonstrates Schmutzer's mastery of light effects. I can't put it better than Clive, who writes in his Art and the Aesthete post on Schmutzer, "He has unusual skill in balancing the plain darks and lights with delicately fretted greys."

Ferdinand Schmutzer, Die "kleine" Klöstersuppe (The "little' Free Soup)

Etching, 1907

Schmutzer came from an artistic family. He was the son of the animal sculptor Ferdinand Schmutzer, and grandson of the sculptor Vincent Schmutzer. His great-grandfather Jacob Mathäus Schmutzer founded the Imperial Academy of Engraving, which mutated into the current Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, where Ferdinand Schmutzer studied sculpture under Kuhne and etching under William Unger (winning the Prix National in 1894).

Ferdinand Schmutzer, Entdecktes Geheimniss (The Secret Discovered)

Etching, 1897

Ferdinand Schmutzer was himself appointed as a Professor at the Vienna Academy in 1908. He was a member of the Vienna Secession from 1901, and President 1914-1917. He was born, lived, and died in Vienna. He was an important figure in the artistic and cultural life of the city before and after the Great War, and was associated with Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Richard Strauss, and Arthur Schnitzler.

Ferdinand Schmutzer, Antwerpen (Antwerp)

Etching, 1915

Besides genre scenes such as my first three etchings, Ferdinand Schmutzer also produced elegant landscapes and cityscapes, in a style that shows the influence of German Impressionists such as Leopold von Kalckreuth and Paul Baum.

Ferdinand Schmutzer, Blick auf die Kirche von Dürnstein (View of Dürnstein church)

Etching, 1921

Ferdinand Schmutzer produced around 300 etchings, which have been catalogued by Arpad Weixlgärtner in Das radierte Werk von Ferdinand Schmutzer, 1922. He also left more than 3000 glass plate photographs, an important part of his artistic legacy that has only recently been uncovered. Like his etchings, Schmutzer's photographs are highly sensitive to the play of light and shade

Dark night of the soul: the art of Felix Meseck

Felix Meseck was born in Danzig in 1883, and died in Holzminden in 1955. Meseck studied at the Fine Art Academies in Berlin and Königsberg, studying painting under Ludwig Dettmann and printmaking with Heinrich Wolff. In 1926 he was appointed professor at the Weimar Academy, a post from which he was forced out by the Nazis. Before WWI, in which he served at the front as an ordinary soldier, Meseck concentrated on painting; after the war he turned to printmaking, becoming especially known for his etchings and drypoints. Meseck was a member of the Berlin Secession, and contributed to leading journals such as Ganymed, as well as illustrating works by Shakespeare, Goethe, Novalis, and Brentano. Much of Felix Meseck's work was destroyed in the Red Army attack on Danzig in 1945.

Felix Meseck, Landschaft

Etching, 1920s

Felix Meseck's art is a curious blend of Expressionism, Romanticism and Symbolism, with a forlorn, desolate quality at its heart. His spiky, unsettling line is the opposite of everything fluid, supple, and sensuous. Instead there is a sense of jarred nerves and watchful unease. The overriding impression is one of neurasthenia, and I would not be at all surprised to discover that Meseck suffered from shell-shock (post-traumatic stress) after his experiences in WWI. His art has that hyper-aware inability to relax. The trees that are a recurring motif in his art certainly bring to mind the ravaged landscapes of WWI. Whether depicting landscapes or symbolic groups of people, there is something in Felix Meseck's work that speaks of unreachable loss. The people in his etchings for Hymnen an die Nacht seem disorientated and desperate, like the displaced and bereaved of war. This work was published very soon after the end of WWI, in 1919, and would certainly have carried that emotional charge for Meseck's contemporaries. It was printed at Gurlitt-Presse and published by Fritz Gurlitt in an edition of 125 copies, of which 50 were printed on heavyweight handmade wove paper, with all ten etchings hand-signed by the artist.

Felix Meseck, Hymnen an die Nacht I

Etching, 1919

Felix Meseck, Hymnen an die Nacht II

Etching, 1919

Felix Meseck, Hymnen an die Nacht IV

Etching, 1919

Felix Meseck, Hymnen an die Nacht V

Etching, 1919

Felix Meseck, Hymnen an die Nacht VI

Etching, 1919

Felix Meseck, Hymnen an die Nacht VII

Etching, 1919

Felix Meseck, Hymnen an die Nacht IX

Etching, 1919

There was a retrospective exhibition of the art of Felix Meseck at the Museum Höxter Corvey in 1987.