The Impressionist etchings of Auguste Lauzet

The art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel was born in Paris in 1831. In 1865 he took over his father’s picture-dealing business, which specialised in the work of the plein-air Barbizon School. Paul Durand-Ruel continued to support the Barbizon artists, but from the early 1870s, sensing a change in the air, he also cultivated a younger set of painters, influenced by Barbizon but going way beyond it in the freedom of their brushstrokes, the Impressionists. Durand-Ruel represented Degas, Manet, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, and Guillaumin among others, dominating the art market from his galleries in Paris, London, and New York. He established a new pattern of the gallerist as patron, the maker and breaker of careers, and manipulator of the market.

The 1892 book L’Art impressioniste d’après la collection privée de M. Durand-Ruel is a record of the Impressionist works that Durand-Ruel kept for himself. The whole book can be read online here .
It was written by Georges Lecomte, and the publisher on the title page is Typographie Chamerot et Renouard. I assume that the book was commissioned and financed by Durand-Ruel himself. I suspect that even though it is described as his private collection, these works would have been for sale to the right buyer; Durand-Ruel had used a similar tactic in 1873 when he published a partwork with etchings after 300 works he had in stock (mostly Barbizon, with some early Impressionist), entitled Galerie Durand-Ruel; recueil d'estampes gravées à l'eau-forte.

The main interest of L’Art impressioniste now lies not in the rather superficial text but in the 35 etchings after paintings in Durand-Ruel’s collection. These etchings were made by the painter, lithographer and etcher Auguste Marie Lauzet. Among many delights, they include 8 etchings after works by Claude Monet, about half of the total number of lifetime etchings after Monet, according to my reckoning. Monet himself never made a single print, so far as I am aware, though he did hand-sign the 20 lithographs made after his paintings by William Thornley in 1890, each published in an edition of only 25 copies.

Auguste Marie Lauzet was born in 1865. He was a close friend of Puvis de Chavannes, and made lithographs after the work of Puvis and Monticelli. These were published by Theo van Gogh at Goupil, and Lauzet was on friendly terms with both Theo and Vincent; he was one of the few mourners at Vincent van Gogh's funeral. The esteem in which Lauzet was held by the artists whose work he interpreted in etching is shown by the way they came to his aid when he fell ill in 1895. A sale was held at the Hotel Drouot on 9 May 1895 of Tableaux, Aquarelles et Dessins, Scultures, offerts par les Artistes à M. Lauzet. Monet, Degas, and Puvis de Chavannes were among those who donated canvases, and the catalogue stretches to 16 pages. The poet Mallarmé helped Lauzet’s lover, the Symbolist artist Jeanne Jacquemin, organise the sale, writing for instance to Whistler to solicit a contribution (Whistler sent an etching). Despite this help and support, Auguste Lauzet died in 1898, at the age of just 32 or 33.

The etchings Auguste Lauzet made for L’Art impressioniste d’après la collection privée de M. Durand-Ruel are his most important work as an etcher. I present them here, grouped alphabetically by artist, with minimal commentary. All works are etchings or drypoints by Lauzet, all published in 1892, and all printed on cream laid paper, in various shades of ink: various browns, some in black, some in sanguine, one in a blue-grey. I’ve tried to trace where these paintings currently reside, but have had mixed luck; any help from my readers will be much welcomed.

Eugène Boudin, Le Port de Trouville

(Sold by Durand-Ruel in 1899, now in a private collection)

John Lewis Brown, Chevaux de course

(Current whereabouts unknown to me)

Mary Cassatt, Jeune mère

(Now known as A Caress; New Britain Museum of American Art)

Mary Cassatt, Mère et enfant

(Current whereabouts unknown to me)

Edgar Degas, Chevaux au pâturage

(Current whereabouts unknown to me)

Edgar Degas, Avant la course

(Private collection)

Edgar Degas, Ballet de Don Juan

(Current whereabouts unknown to me)

Edgar Degas, Danseuse

(Current whereabouts unknown to me)

Jean-Louis Forain, Aux Folies-Bergère

(Marlene and Spencer Hays Collection, Nashville)

Stanislas Lépine, L’Esplanade des Invalides

(Sold at Sotheby’s, Paris, in 2008; presumably now in a private collection)

Édouard Manet, Venise

(Now known as The Grand Canal, Venice (Blue Venice); Shelburne Museum, Vermont)

Édouard Manet, Danseurs espagnols

(Now known as Spanish Ballet; the Phillips Collection, Washington)

Édouard Manet, La Femme à la guitar

(Sold by Durand-Ruel in 1894. Now known as The Guitar Player; Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington)

Claude Monet, Cabane de douanier à Pourville

(A drawing with practically the same name, Cabane de douanier près de Pourville, and a very similar look, was sold at Sotheby’s New York in 2000, but I suspect this etching is after one of the various paintings in the Cabane des douaniers series, for which the drawing was a preparatory study)

Claude Monet, Champ de tulips en Hollande

(This is not the same painting as the Field of Tulips in Holland in the Musée d’Orsay, though presumably done at the same time, in the spring of 1886)

Claude Monet, Paysage à Antibes

(Current whereabouts unknown to me)

Claude Monet, Promenade, temps gris

(Now known as Morning at Antibes; Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Claude Monet, Rochers de Belle-Isle

(Musée des Beaux-Arts, Reims)

Claude Monet, Vue d’Antibes

(Now known as Antibes, Afternoon effect; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Claude Monet, Meules à Giverny

(I think this is probably Meules, grand soleil; Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington; but Monet made many paintings of these two particular haystacks, so as always, I may be wrong)

Claude Monet, Église de Varangeville

(Now known as Église de Varangeville, soleil couchant; Private  collection, I think)

Camille Pissarro, Sydenham

(Now known as The Avenue, Sydenham; National Gallery, London)

Camille Pissarro, Vue de Rouen

(Now known as Une vue de Rouen depuis cours la Reine; current whereabouts unknown to me)

Camille Pissarro, La Veillée

(Current whereabouts unknown to me)

Camille Pissarro, Retour des champs

(Current whereabouts unknown to me)

Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes, La Fileuse

(Current whereabouts unknown to me)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Femme au chat

(Current whereabouts unknown to me)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Terrasse

(Now known as The Two Sisters  (On the Terrace); Art Institute of Chicago)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Femme à l’éventail

(Hermitage Museum)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pêcheurs au bord de la mer

(Current whereabouts unknown to me)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Déjeuner à Bougival

(Now known as Luncheon of the Boating Party; Phillips Collection, Washington)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Loge

(Now known as At the Concert; Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Portrait

(Now known as The Daughters of Paul Durand-Ruel; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk))

Alfred Sisley, Paysage à Louveciennes

(Current whereabouts unknown to me)

Alfred Sisley, La Seine à Moret

(Current whereabouts unknown to me)

By the time he died in 1922, Paul Durand-Ruel had established Impressionism as the key modern art movement, but it took fifty years of steadfast support, and the taking of breathtaking financial risks, to do so. Without him, life for the Impressionist artists would have been much harder; I feel there is a real historical importance to the Lauzet etchings as a record of which paintings, by which artists, he attached personal importance to. At a glance you can see that for Durand-Ruel the key Impressionists were Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and Degas, with Manet included in the group by default, even though he never exhibited with them. Sisley seems a bit of an afterthought, with only two works illustrated. There’s nothing by Guillaumin, nothing by Cézanne, and of the female Impressionists just two works by Cassatt, with nothing by Morisot, Gonzalès, or Marie Bracquemond.

The balance has shifted somewhat from 1873 when Durand-Ruel published his Receuil d’estampes. In this, the three younger artists who are championed—anointed, as it were, as the leaders of the new art—are Monet, Sisley, and Pissarro. In the introduction by the critic Armand Silvestre, Monet is picked out as “le plus habile et le plus osé”, the ablest and the most daring of the group. The year before the First Impressionist Exhibition, Durand-Ruel is already promoting these three artists as important innovators, and Silvestre is already writing about their art with real insight and sensitivity. In Monet's handling of water, for instance, Silvestre particularly admires the way “des tons métalliques dus au poli du flot qui clapote par petites surfaces unies miroitent sur ses toiles”—the metallic tones of the shimmering flow, lapping in small discrete surfaces [i.e. blocks of colour, or brushstrokes], sparkle on his canvases. Here is Impressionism described before the term was coined, and described with wholehearted approval. Silvestre loves the way their paintings are flooded with light, and the way they evoke beloved landscapes rather than describe them. I’ve argued before, in my post on Armand Guillaumin, that critical reaction to the art of the Impressionists was by no means as uniformly negative as is usually assumed; Armand Silvestre’s tender appreciation of the art of Monet, Sisley, and Pissarro is another example of a sympathetic response to the Impressionist aesthetic.

There is an interesting and refreshingly jargon-free thesis on Durand-Ruel and the Impressionists by Marci Regan here for those who want to know more.

Edvard Munch on a good day

Everyone knows what to expect from the Norwegian Expressionist, Edvard Munch. As he himself put it,  "Sickness, insanity and death were the angels that surrounded my cradle, and they have followed me throughout my life." His most famous painting, The Scream, brilliantly expresses the sense of anxiety and instability that tormented him. Until now, I had only had one print by Munch, a Norwegian landscape that trembles with neurasthenia. It was the first piece of art he created after his devastating mental breakdown in 1908.

Edvard Munch Landschaft (Norwegian landscape)

Drypoint, 1908

Ref: Woll, Edvard Munch: The Complete Graphic Works, 298 state ii/iii

But now I have a second Munch print, another drypoint, that emanates happiness and friendship, and a simple pleasure in life. The two couldn't be more different. It's a 1905 portrait of Erdmuter Luchsinger, the daughter of his friend Herbert Esche, then aged around three. I expect her smiling face cheered Munch up, at least for a while, and his record of it has the same effect on me.

Edvard Munch, Kinderkopf (Herbert Esches datter)

Drypoint, 1905

Ref: Woll, Edvard Munch, the Complete Graphic Works, 261b

The artist as fire-eater: Willibald Wolf Rudinoff

After my last post about the resourceful Philip Gilbert Hamerton, who took his carefully-prepared etching plates with him on a canoeing trip, I thought I should follow up with the the wonderfully-named Willibald Wolf Rudinoff, a circus performer and nightclub singer who carted his self--designed etching press with him across the world. Rudinoff (sometimes listed as Willi, Willy, or Wilhelm Rudinoff and also under the surname Morgenstern, or Morgenstern-Rudinoff) was born in Angermünde, Germany on 4 August 1866. Rudinoff came from an Eastern European Jewish family (either Polish or Russian, the sources differ, but from somewhere in the Pale of Settlement); his father was a cantor, who was fleeing persecution. Rudinoff's education was spread across Russia, Germany, and France, and as an adult he cultivated a "citizen of the world" mentality. Willibald Wolf Rudinoff also worked as Willy Morgenstern. Apparently his passport was in the name Morgenstern, and this seems to have been his real name. Six foot two, with a commanding face and physique, he assumed the name Rudinoff as a stage name, travelling across Europe as a circus performer. In this capacity Rudinoff is recorded as a fire-eater, creator of shadow silhouettes, and also as a singer with a fine tenor voice, which he also used to imitate the cries of animals.

Willibald Wolf Rudinoff, An der Elbe

Etching, 1901

In 1891 Rudinoff became close friends with the dramatist Frank Wedekind, who was attracted by Rudinoff's mastery of pantomime. Sometime around 1900 Rudinoff made the switch from circus artist to fine artist. Rudinoff is known to have studied art for some months at the Munich Academy, and also at the Académie Julian in Paris. However, he continued performing as a singer in cabarets and nightclubs across the world. In June 1903, for instance, he was performing at the Tivoli in Sydney, and a reporter from the Sydney Mail recorded that, "He has become one of the most sought-after and highest salaried attractions on the variety stage, and his engagements all over the world have made the world his sketching ground." As a consequence, Rudinoff was active as an artist across Western and Northern Europe. The Sydney Mail reporter documents the contents of his lodgings: "From the traditional artistic litter his etching press - made after his own design - is easily identifiable. This in itself constitutes a nice little item for weekly carriage, weighing as it does four hundredweight, and when you add to this stacks of canvases, reams of water-colour paper, iron-bound chests of oils, brushes, crayons, pastes, acids, and baths for etching, violin, guitar, copper plates, and a collection of etchings that would grace the walls of any picture gallery, you may form some slight idea of Rudinoff's enthusiasm."

Willibald Wolf Rudinoff, Dot Hardy (Porträtstudie)

Etching, 1902

My first etching by Rudinoff is a post-Impressionist boating scene on the river Elbe in Germany, My second was created in Sheffield, and seems to depict a fellow music-hall or cabaret artist, Dot Hardy. Sadly, Google searches for Dot or Dorothy Hardy have not yielded any information about this lively-looking young woman. Willibald Wolf Rudinoff is remembered primarily as an etcher, but was also a master watercolorist. Rudinoff produced scenes of music halls and circuses, landscapes, coastal scenes, and figure studies in an artistic career that deserves more attention than it has received. In 1902 he showed 70 works at the Grafton Galleries, London; about the same time, the Munich National Gallery acquired a complete set of his etchings to date for their print room. The last dated piece of his art that I have found is from 1929. His date of death is not known.

A plein-air etcher: Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Philip Gilbert Hamerton was born in the hamlet of Laneside near Oldham, Lancashire, in 1834. Initially intending to be a painter, he turned to art criticism. His works include Etching and Etchers, Contemporary French Painters, and Painting in France after the Decline of Classicism. In 1870 Hamerton founded the magazine The Portfolio, which he edited until his death in 1894. While he is still remembered as the encourager and promoter of other etchers, the fact that Philip Gilbert Hamerton was himself an etcher of real accomplishment has been almost forgotten. The 37 etchings of scenes on the river Arroux that he selected for his book The Unknown River in 1871 have the particular Impressionistic charm of etchings made in the open air, during the course of a canoeing holiday. Hamerton meticulously prepared 60 etching plates for this trip, fixing them to drawing boards which were then placed in a series of grooved boxes that were then sent ahead to inns along the river, so that Hamerton's stock of prepared plates was constantly replenished.

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Pre Charmoy

Etching, 1871

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Voudenay-le-Château

Etching, 1871

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Near Voudenay

Etching, 1871

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Cathedral and Bishop's Palace, Autun

Etching, 1871

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Genetoie

Etching, 1871

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Near Ornay

Etching, 1871

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Recuange I

Etching, 1871

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Gueugnon

Etching, 1871

Hamerton was influenced in his artistic thinking by the French plein-air artists of the Barbizon School, the forerunners of Impressionism; like the Impressionists, he was perfectly at ease adding industrial chimneys to a rural view, as in the etching of Gueugnon. At the end of The Unknown River, he writes, "No art is more agreeable for direct work from nature than etching is. The rapidity of it, and its freedom, are greatly in its favour, and so is its remarkable independence of damp and wet. Many of the plates in this series were immersed in the river, after being etched, when the artist was upset; others were executed in bad weather, with the rain literally pouring over the copper in a manner which would have rendered any other kind of drawing quite impossible." Some of Hamerton's amusing self-portraits make the most of the various trials and tribulations suffered in the course of his "etcher's voyage of self-discovery."

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Danger Ahead

Etching, 1871

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, A Difficult Place

Etching, 1871

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Crossing a Field

Etching, 1871

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Seeking Shelter

Etching, 1871

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, A Night in the Canoe

Etching, 1871

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Portrait of Tom

Etching, 1871

Hamerton's 1876 work The Sylvan Year has etchings by various artists, including Auguste André Lançon, Léopold Massard, and Edmond Hédouin, alongside plates by Hamerton himself. My copy of this handsome work appears to have been a presentation gift from Queen Victoria, something I only noticed when preparing this post.

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Ancient Chestnuts

Etching, 1876

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Rivulet in a Forest

Etching, 1876

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Cottages in a Valley

Etching, 1876

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Shepherd and Sheep

Etching, 1876

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, In a Wood at Moonrise

Etching, 1876

It is no doubt just that Philip Gilbert Hamerton, like his great contemporary John Ruskin, is remembered primarily as a critic rather than as an artist - but I would not like his delicate and unpretentious art to be completely forgotten. Having lived most of his adult life in France (his wife was French), Philip Gilbert Hamerton died in Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1894.

A Jugendstil Masterpiece: Sehnsucht by Gotz Dohler

In the early years of the twentieth century, many German artists were busy constructing the vocabulary of Expressionism. But some remained faithful to the Symbolist/Art Nouveau aesthetic of the end of the previous century, known as Jugendstil. I think the etching in this post, published in 1906 by the Leipzig art revue Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst, is one of the masterpieces of late Jugendstil. It's one of the most perfect summations of Jugendstil I have seen - intricate, brooding, romantic, with a magical transformation between human and natural forms. Please click on the image to get a larger version with more detail.

C. Götz Döhler, Sehnsucht (Longing)

Etching with aquatint, 1906

What is perhaps most surprising about this work is that the artist who created it, Götz Dohler, remains almost completely unknown. I have managed to discover a first initial, C., and a year of birth, 1867, and that's it. He's not listed in Bénézit, Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs. Google comes up with almost nothing. I can't find any record of work by Döhler being sold or offered for sale. Via Libri doesn't come up with any books or journals illustrated by him. It's as if he just created this one perfect work and then vanished into thin air. And yet no one acquires the technical skill shown in Sehnsucht without a lot of practice. I can imagine that if Götz Döhler remained doggedly faithful to Judgendstil he would have faded from view as that style became outmoded, and equally that his lush romantic sensibility would have been out-of-tune with the times once the catastrophe of the First World War go under way. But it still seems mysterious that so little can be ascertained about an artist of such stature. Do any of my readers know anything more about him?

Update 15 September 2013:
I correct myself: C. Götz Döhler is listed in Bénézit, with the variant spelling Doehler. He was born in Glachau on the 31st of March 1867. He studied in Leipzig, and seems to have lived and worked there. Although he is described as a painter and printmaker, his main work seems to have been designing and executing large decorative paintings.

A Lamplit Dreamscape: Karl Hofer

Karl Hofer, Nächtliche Überfahrt (Night journey)

Etching with aquatint, 1899

When I first saw this haunting etching with aquatint, I wasn't sure who the artist was. Paul Klee? Marc Chagall? Both seemed likely possibilities. But in fact it's a very early work, predating both Klee and Chagall, by the German Expressionist Karl Hofer. Born in 1878 in Karlsruhe, Karl Christian Ludwig Hofer (sometimes listed as Carl Hofer) studied at the Karlsruhe Academy of Fine Art from 1896-1900; this stiking etching was made while he was still a student.

Karl Hofer, Tänzerin

Lithograph, 1921

Although a prominent member of the Expressionist movement, Karl Hofer was never associated with one particular group. In common with most Expressionists, Karl Hofer's art was condemned as degenerate by the Nazis; one hundred and fifty of his canvases were destroyed in his studio. After the war, Karl Hofer was appointed Director of the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst in Berlin. He died in Berlin in 1955. The exhibition Eros, dreams and death. Between Symbolism and Expressionism: The early work of graphic Karl Hofer, Emil Rudolf Weiss and Wilhelm Laage was held at the Städtischen Kunstmuseum Spendhaus Reutlingen in 2012; I believe these two examples of Karl Hofer's art show how true that exhibition title was for him.

Not Monet, Monnet - Movimento Arte Concreta

Gianni Monnet seems to have fallen through the cracks of art history, which is sad in all sorts of ways. Of all the artists of MAC, the Movimento Arte Concreta, which lasted from 1948 to 1958, Gianni Monnet seems to have been the joker in the pack. His original works contributed to Documenti d'arte d'oggi, the movement's four-volume journal, are almost uncategorisable, so intent was Monnet on sticking on various bits of material, ranging from furry purple felt to sandpaper to corrugated card. I've already posted here about an instance in which a lithograph had holes hand-punched through it, a piece of scrumpled newspaper collaged to it, and sandpaper and corrugated card fixed to the facing page in order to make visible impressions on the surface of the litho. Surface and the rupturing of the surface; texture and the effects of texture on the untextured surface; these seem to have been his obsessions.

Gianni Monnet

Untitled lithograph, 1955

Gianni Monnet

Untitled lithograph, 1955

Gianni Monnet

Untitled lithograph, 1956

Gianni Monnet

Untitled lithograph, 1956

Gianni Monnet

Untitled lithograph, with hand-punched holes, collaged newspaper,

and deliberate surface impressions from facing page, 1956-57

Gianni Monnet

Lithograph for the cover of Documenti d'arte d'oggi, 1958

with die-cut hole, collaged corrugated card and collaged furry purple felt

Gianni Monnet was born in Turin in 1912. He trained as an architect, before moving to Milan in 1946 to become an artist. Two years later he co-founded the influential abstract art group MAC, Movimente Arte Concreta, alongside Gillo Dorfles, Atanasio Soldati, and Bruno Munari. Inspired by Theo van Doesburg and the Dutch De Stijl movement, and also by the Swiss painter Max Bill, MAC espoused a severe aesthetic in which only the "concrete" elements of form and colour were the artist's only true concern. The premature death of Gianni Monnet in 1958 led to the disbanding of MAC in May of that year. Without this elusive and mercurial figure, the others seem not to have had the heart to carry on.