Two sides to every story: a copperplate of Charles Meryon

Charles Meryon was born in Batignolles, Paris, on 23 November 1821, and died in the mental hospital at Charenton on 14 February 1868, at the age of just 46. His name is indelibly associated with the city, which he depicted in etchings of incredible subtlety. Yet Meryon was a cuckoo in the Parisian nest. He was the illegitimate son of Narcisse Chaspaux, a dancer at the Paris opera house, and Charles Lewis Meryon, an itinerant English doctor. This ancestry may explain the uncertainty as to whether his surname should be spelled Meryon or Méryon—authorities differ, as they do about whether his mother was French or Spanish. Narcisse Chaspaux died insane in 1837, the year Charles Meryon entered the École navale. His naval career lasted until 1842, taking him both to Athens and to the South Pacific. In the course of these voyages he made many sketches, and eventually he resolved to become an artist. However, it soon became apparent that he was colour-blind, and that a career as a painter was out of the question. So he turned to etching, studying the art in the studio of Eugène Bléry (1805-1886), whose meticulous standards of observation Meryon maintained.

Eugène Bléry, Vue du château de Nemours

Etching, 1851

I have an interesting pair of Meryon etchings. The first is one of his Parisian scenes, Le Petit Pont. This was actually his first important work, exhibited at the Salon of 1850. My impression is from the cancelled plate. As you can see, Charles Meryon has not been content simply to mark an X from corner to corner, or make a discreet cancellation mark in the bottom lefthand corner. Instead he has attacked the plate with a drypoint needle, scratching a rhythmic welter of diagonal marks across the whole composition, as if he has lashed it with a whip. Ironically, this intended destruction of the piece has not quite worked, as to a modern eye the combination of Canaletto-like calm and expressionistic fury is rather pleasing. Meryon’s Paris seems to be being both destroyed and remade under our gaze. There is an image of the uncancelled plate in this post by John Coulthart at feuilleton.

Charles Meryon, Le Petit Pont (from the cancelled plate)

Etching, 1850

Having put Le Petit Pont beyond use, as he thought, Charles Meryon then turned the copperplate over, rotated it by 90 degrees, and used it to etch my second work, Vue de l’ancien Louvre, after a painting by the Dutch artist Reinier Nooms, known as Zeeman (1623-1667). This interpretative etching was commissioned from Meryon in 1865 by the all-powerful surintendant des Beaux-Arts, M. de Nieuwerkerke, for publication by the Chalcographie du Louvre, and executed the following year. Meryon had already made four etchings after Zeeman as part of his apprenticeship, having been particularly impressed both by Zeeman’s etchings of Paris and his marine sujects. He etched the plate for Vue de l’ancien Louvre directly in front of the painting, holding in one hand the plate and a reversing mirror, and in the other his etching needle.

Charles Meryon, Vue de l’ancien Louvre

Etching after Zeeman, 1866

It was Meryon’s custom, as we have seen with Le Petit Pont, to cancel his plates after a small edition. In fact he was quite obsessive about this. In the case of the Vue de l’ancien Louvre, however, he was stymied. He marched up to the Louvre to reclaim the plate, and when this was refused flew into a temper and laid about him with his cane. After creating this ruckus, Meryon left in a state of great vexation, while for their part the authorities at the Louvre resolved never to commission work again from such a rowdy and unreasonable character. As a result, the Chalcographie du Louvre contains the only surviving copperplate of Charles Meryon, from which my impressions of the two contrasting sides were printed by Vernant in 1922, in an edition of 605 copies for Byblis. They accompanied an article by Pierre Gusman, “Histoire d’une planche de Meryon”.

The row at the Louvre was evidence of an underlying mental problem; Meryon had from May 1858 spent fifteen months in the asylum at Charenton, and he seems to have suffered from delusions and paranoia. It may be that the sense of order that dominates Meryon’s 102 etchings is evidence of a temperament that was always threatening to explode out of control, and that the excessive violence with which he cancelled the plate of Le Petit Pont shows how strongly an appetite for destruction counterbalanced Charles Meryon’s creative instinct.

Japonisme/Europeanisme

In the course of this blog, I often use the word Japonisme, as a way of encapsulating the rejuvenating, electrifying effect that exposure to Japanese art and aesthetics had on European artists of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist era. One of the first blogs I started to follow was Lily's Japonisme, which has remained a source of great value to me. The meaning of the word Japonisme can best be shown visually, perhaps by looking at this colour autolithograph by Henri Rivière (1864-1951).

Henri Rivière, Brume matinale (Matin de brume à Loguivy)

Lithograph, 1903

But was Japonisme a one-way street, with European artists learning from the Japanese, and the Japanese going on their own sweet way? Of course not. Japanese artists were as eager to learn from the West as European artists were to learn from the East. Here is an example of what I mean, a modernist female nude by Kiyoshi Hasegawa (Hasegawa Kiyoshi, as it should be in Japanese convention). I think this is a wonderful piece of work, a machine age nude rather than an Art Deco one.

Kiyoshi Hasegawa, Femme nue

Engraving, 1929

Kiyoshi Hasegawa was born in Yokohama in 1891. He moved to Paris alongside fellow Japanese artist Tsuguharu Foujita, and spent most of his life there, working in a Western style deeply influenced by the subtlety of line and feeling in Japanese art. I have to admit I don't know the precise dates at which Foujita and Hasegawa arrived in Paris, but I have a strong feeling that Foujita got there first, and that Hasegawa was always therefore second fiddle to his compatriot. Western influences on Hasegawa's work include Jean Laboureur and Jules Pascin. Hasegawa's prints are primarily engravings and mezzotints. He died in 1980. In 2005 the Yokohama Museum of Art received over 1000 items from the Paris atelier of Kiyoshi Hasegawa.

Two Latvian modernists: Rikovsky and Dannenhirsch

One of the pleasures of the art revue Byblis: Miroir des Arts du Livre et de l'Estampe, of which I now possess a complete run, 1921-1931, is its occasional surveys of graphic art in far-flung corners of Europe, illustrated with original prints. The 35th issue, for instance, has an article entitled L'art graphique moderne en Lettonie by Visvalds Pengerots, and this article is the source of my entire knowledge of Latvian art. The two original prints accompanying the article are by Jury Rikovsky and Bernard Dannenhirsch.

Jury Rikovsky, Les pêcheuses (Fisherwomen)

Wood engraving, 1930

Jury Rikovsky, born in 1893, studied in Paris under André Lhote. He exhibited his first wood engravings in 1930. Rikovsky was influenced by Russian artists of the day such as B. Grigorief and J. Annenkof. I think this wood engraving a very finely-observed study in light and shade. It may be due to Parisian influence that one strap of the younger woman's dress has slipped aside so fetchingly.

Bernard Dannenhirsch, Riga

Linocut, 1930

Bernard Dannenhirsch, born in 1894, was particularly known for his wood engravings and linocuts. In the 1920s, his interest in social affairs was noticeable in cycles such as L'air et la lumière - propriété privé, and his illustrations for Bruno Jasiensky's novel Je brûle Paris. This bleak study in barbed wire and brutal architecture has, I think, an air of social protest about it.

Besides these two, Pengerots writes interestingly about artists such as S. Vidbergs (influenced by Aubrey Beardsley), Niklavs Strunke (a pupil of the Russian artist W. Maté), Romans Suta (who is compared to Grosz), Nicolas Puzirevsky (a pupil of Emil Orlik), Isaac Friedlender (who emigrated to New York), Serge Antonov (who specialised in colour linocuts), the wood engravers Indrikis Zeberinsch and Alexandre von Stromberg, the etchers Théodore Brenson and Jacob Belzens, the engraver Charles Krauze, and the lithographers Vilis Kruminsch and Eugène Klimov.

Frederick Francis Foottet: A Forgotten Master

The English Impressionist/Symbolist Frederick Francis Foottet was born in Yorkshire in 1850. Foottet made his debut at the Royal Academy in 1873, and continued to exhibit up to the 1930s. As a printmaker, Foottet made etchings from 1890, and colour lithographs from 1900. F. F. Foottet's first painting accepted by the Royal Academy was entitled December. Ruskin praised it, but added, "Yes, the artist is painting trees, but is he sure that he can draw a leaf?" Foottet then spent several months of intensive study of fruit and leaves under Ruskin's personal instruction. After this, Foottet left London to settle in Derby.

Frederick Francis Foottet, Waterfall by moonlight

Lithograph, 1900

This evocative colour lithograph by Foottet was published by The Studio, whose correspondent praised Foottet's "subtle and imaginative landscape work in lithography". Exposure to the work of the Impressionists and Symbolists had freed Foottet from the constrictions of Ruskin's moral earnestness, and under its influence he developed his mature style, of which the Studio correspondent wrote, "It has been said that Mr. Foottet is among the few living artists whose landscapes are symbolistic and charged with human emotion. True enough, and if this mystical and poetic way of treating Nature is appreciated far oftener in prose than in paint, it is none the less very noteworthy to all who take serious interest in the productions of true artists." Frederick Francis Foottet died in 1935. His art still awaits a modern re-evaluation.

With the grain: the woodcuts of René Quillivic

The sculptor and wood engraver René Quillivic (1879-1969) was born into a humble family in the village of Plouhinec in the department of Finistère in Brittany. He attended the night classes at the École Boulle in Paris, studying sculpture under Marius Jean Antonin Mercié. Although he exhibited at various Paris Salons - des Artistes Français, de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, des Indépendants, d'Automne - the art of René Quillivic remained rooted in his native Brittany. He left his heart-rending mark on its landscape in the form of many war memorials to the fallen of the First World War. Many of these are in the Pays Bigouden, the area of Finistère made famous by Pêr-Jakez Helias in his marvellous book The Horse of Pride.

René Quillivic, Marine bretonne

Woodcut, 1922

Besides his sculptures, René Quillivic was noted for his woodcuts. He exhibited his prints in both Paris and London, and was a member of the Société de la Gravure sur Bois Originale. As a sculptor, Quillivic preferred the robustness of the woodcut (cut on the plank of the wood, with the grain) to the delicacy of the wood engraving (cut on the end grain).

René Quillivic, La vague

Woodcut, 1929

No Breton artist can escape the sea, and René Quillivic is no exception. All three of my Quillivic woodcuts are marine subjects. They show a certain Art Deco elegance, and also the lingering influence of Japonisme, especially in the beautifully rhythmical depiction of a tumultuous sea in La vague (The wave).

René Quillivic, Oceano Nox

Woodcut, 1929

Perhaps the most remarkable of the three is the one entitled Oceano Nox, after a poem by Victor Hugo. Is the fisherman in the image drowning, or simply entering a new life in the undersea world? In his essay "René Quillivic, graveur Breton" in the revue Byblis in 1929, Charles Chassé links this print to a second poem by Tristan Corbière, who writes of the death of sailors that

                              ... ils sont mort dans leur bottes

Leur boujaron au coeur, tout vifs dans leur capotes.

They die with their boots on, their ration of rum in their hearts, 
all alive in their sou'westers.

Etchings by and after Rembrandt van Rijn

The story of etching in France could be told simply in terms of French etchers' passionate engagement with the work of Rembrandt - as Alison McQueen has effectively done in her brilliant book The Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt: Re-inventing an Old Master in Nineteenth-Century France, which is available in full here. Rembrandt was not just the etchers' guru, as I described Maxime Lalanne in a recent post, but the etchers' god. Those who taught etching to hundreds, such as Charles Waltner or Alphonse Legros, held Rembrandt up as the most brilliant etcher of all time, and their students - such as Legros's star pupil William Strang - learned to gauge their own success or failure by comparison with the work of the Dutch master. Even Impressionist etchers such as Norbert Goeneutte and Henri Guérard started by copying Rembrandts. The result is that, besides the two original Rembrandt etchings that will be the main focus of this post, I have many etchings after Rembrandt by a roll-call of nineteenth century printmakers, all eager to test themselves against the skill of the master. In fact I have one even earlier, by Antoine de Marcenay de Ghuy, signed and dated in the plate 6 October 1755. 10 of de Marcenay's total of 71 prints were studies after Rembrandt.

Rembrandt, Self-Portrait

Etching by Antoine de Marcenay de Ghuy, 1755

Rembrandt, Autoportrait (tenant un bâton dans la main gauche)

Etching by Pauline Wissant, 1871

Rembrandt, Portrait de l'artiste

Etching by Charles Waltner, 1906

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) scarcely needs any more words added to his fame by me. But there are some interesting things to say about his etchings (and I'll just use the word etching to describe them, even though many also show touches of the drypoint needle and the engraver's burin). Rembrandt made about 300 etchings, issuing them in various states with sometimes very small modifications; he had already discovered the kind of collector-based marketing that enables music companies to sell us the same music over and over again by adding an extra track or a remix. The first Rembrandt etchings were pulled by Rembrandt himself, and even if not all the lifetime impressions were hand-printed by Rembrandt, it is obvious that a lifetime proof will be of far greater value than any posthumous one.

Rembrandt, Saskia van Ulenburg

Etching by William Unger, 1876

Rembrandt, Un Gueux

Etching by Henri Guérard, 1876

Rembrandt, Portrait de Rembrandt, d'après lui-même

Etching by A. Protche, 1974

With posthumous impressions, however, the water gets murkier. It's not necessarily so that the earliest posthumous prints from Rembrandt copper plates are the best, nor that what is printed is entirely Rembrandt's. Copper is a very soft metal, which is what makes it ideal for etching and drypoint, but this softness also means that copper plates wear away with alarming speed. At various times engravers, often highly skilled, have tried to "improve" degraded Rembrandt plates, taking the image ever further from the touch of Rembrandt's own hand. The mid-nineteenth century put a stop to that, with the invention of the process known as steel facing, whereby a copper plate is given a thin coating of steel by electrotyping. This steel face does not damage the plate, and can be removed from it. It prevents any further wear, though obviously it cannot repair wear already received, nor remove the traces of previous restorers.

Rembrandt, Paysage

Etching by Jules Jacquemart, 1877

Rembrandt, Landschaft mit ruinen

Etching by William Unger, 1886

Rembrandt, Winterlandschaft

Etching by William Unger, 1886

A large collection of Rembrandt copper plates, deriving from the estate of Rembrandt's close friend, the Amsterdam print dealer Clément de Jonghe, has survived to this day. After passing through various hands, it was sold at auction in London in 1993, and the plates dispersed. Eight of these have since been reprinted, with some controversy you can easily discover for yourself via Google, as the Millennium Edition. I don't have any of these controversial Rembrandt re-strikes, but I do have two beautiful Rembrandt etchings printed from other plates in the same hoard in 1929. At that date the plates belonged to M. Alvin-Beaumont, who had bought them in 1906. He had the plates rigorously assessed and then vehemently championed by the etcher and art historian Charles Coppier, and the publication of small editions of three of them in 1929 was accompanied by a long and argumentative essay by Coppier, mainly concerned with rubbishing the expertise of every previous authority on Rembrandt's etchings. This extreme cross-fighting in the field of Rembrandt studies has continued unabated to the present day. The plates were published in an edition of 605 copies on very high-quality laid paper. There is a watermark (filigrane) in the paper, but unfortunately I don't recognize it. The publisher was the art revue Byblis: Miroir des arts du livre et de l'estampe. This was published in two editions: 105 deluxe copies, with the text on Arches, and 500 ordinary copies, with the text on vélin pur fil Lafuma. The deluxe copies had extra prints, many prints in two different states, and many prints hand-signed by the artists. As mine is one of the ordinary ones, it only has two Rembrandt prints, lacking Les Pélerins d'Emmaüs of 1654. The printer Jacquemin, Paris. Coppier writes of the plates and the proofs: "Ces trois cuivres, on le voit, sont à peu près intacts, et donnent encore des épreuves magnifiques." These three plates, as can be seen, are almost pristine, and still yield magnificent impressions.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, The Return of the Prodigal Son

Original etching, 1636

Printed from the original copper plate in 1929

Refs: Bartsch 91, Hind 147

The earlier of my Rembrandt etchings is Le retour de l'enfant prodigue (The Return of the Prodigal Son), etched in 1636. After the 1993 sale, the original copper plate for this was bought by the Rembrandthuis. The Biblical scene is rendered with great pathos and emotion. There's a good essay on this etching here, so I won't go on about it!

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Beggars Receiving Alms at the Door of a House

Original etching, 1648

Printed from the original copper plate in 1929

Refs: Bartsch 176, Hind 233

My second Rembrandt etching is Les mendiants à la porte d'une maison (Beggars Receiving Alms at the Door of a House) from 1648. This is a very interesting scene in which Rembrandt explores his enduring fascinating with beggars and outcasts; perhaps he felt that at any moment he might become one. The website of the Rijksmuseum notes that the father of this beggar family is probably blind, and that he is carrying a hurdy-gurdy, "the typical instrument of the itinerant musician".

Rembrandt, Portrait d'homme

Etching by Charles Courtry, 1881

Rembrandt, Tête de vieillard

Etching by Jules Jacquemart, 1877

Rembrandt, Die Judenbraut (The Jewish Bride)

Etching by Willem Steelink, 1891

Rembrandt's complete etchings can be explored here. One word of warning before I go. In the nineteenth century the firm of Amand-Durand made excellent heliogravure facsimiles of Rembrandt etchings. These are photo-engravings (possibly with some fine detailing by drypoint) rather than hand-made prints. So convincing are they that they are often offered for sale as original etchings after Rembrandt. Decorative and desirable they may be, but etchings they are not.

Rembrandt, Portrait of His Wife

Etching by N. S. Mossolow, 1892

Process, materials, and aesthetics: woodblocks by Otto Eckmann

Otto Eckmann was one of the most important figures in the Judgendstil (German Art Nouveau) art movement. Born in Hamburg in 1865, Otto Eckmann studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg, and then in Nuremberg, before entering the Munich Academy of Fine Art in 1885. In the end it was to be the arts and crafts element of his training that predominated. After initial success as a painter in the Symbolist style, in 1894 Otto Eckmann renounced oil painting and auctioned off his canvases. From this point he concentrated on graphics (particularly woodcuts) and on the design of tapestries, stained glass, furniture, fabrics, and ceramics. Otto Eckmann was also a pioneering typographer and type designer, and his Jugendstil typefaces Eckmann and Fette Eckmann are still in use today. Eckmann's type design was influenced by Japanese script, just as his woodcuts show the strong influence of Japanese art. Otto Eckmann was a major contributor to the two most important Art Nouveau revues published in Germany, Pan and Jugend. He died in 1902.

Otto Eckmann, Schwertlilien

Colour woodcut, 1895

In many ways, the career of Otto Eckmann can be seen as pivotal in the democratization of art. This is true both in the way he blurred the distinction between fine and decorative arts, and in the way he renounced oil painting, which was geared to an art market of the rich and powerful, for popular and commercial art forms that reached as wide an audience as possible.

Otto Eckmann, Nachtreiher

Colour woodcut, 1896

The extent to which craft decisions influenced artistic outcomes in his work can be seen in my two colour woodblock prints. Both were published by Pan, and both were printed by Gieseke und Devrient in Leipzig. Although both are intended to be independent graphic images, I could easily imagine either of them being put to commercial use: Schwertlilien as a repeat image on a textile, for instance, or Nachtreiher as a motif on ceramics. And in each case decisions about processes and materials have decisively influenced the aesthetics of the final print. Schwertlilien (Irises), with its sharp outlines and bold contrasts between the black and yellow of the flowers, the grey of their leaves, and the uninked background, has been printed on cream wove paper. The creaminess softens the image and prevents it from being stark and challenging, while the robust thickness and open texture of the paper give an organic solidity to the print. By contrast, the ethereal Nachtreiher (Night herons), is printed on delicate, wafer-thin china paper, which is then floated onto a wove backing sheet. The resulting print has a dreamlike quality, as if the herons are conferring on some matter of mystical importance. This is quite at odds with the immediate physicality of the irises, which feel as if you could reach out and pluck them from the page.