Modern woodcuts and lithographs by British and French artists by Holme C. Geoffrey (Charles Geoffrey) 1887-1954 & Salaman Malcolm C. (Malcolm Charles) 1855-1940

Author:Holme, C. Geoffrey (Charles Geoffrey), 1887-1954 & Salaman, Malcolm C. (Malcolm Charles), 1855-1940
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Wood-engraving, Wood-engraving, Lithography, Lithography
Publisher: London ; New York : The Studio
Published: 1919-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

ILLUSTRATION FOR " LA CAMPAGNE ROMAINE "

BY LfoN PICHON, AFTER MAXIME DETHOHAS (Published by Lion Pichon)

THE WOODCUT IN FRANCE

' LA MOISSON "

BY PAUL-tolLB PISSABKO

Fille d'Auberge, from the Copa of Virgil (p. 78), we have, as it were, an epitome of the artist's charm upon the wood-block.

That alert and versatile artist M. Hermann-Paul has been moved by the allure of the woodcut to a new phase of his graphic expression, and a very interesting one. From the easy vivacity with which his pencil, his coloured crayons and his lithographic chalk have severally interpreted his moder-r nity of outlook on the multitudinous aspects of contemporary life, the handling of the knife upon the wood has led him to an engagingly severe simplification of design with luminous effect of boldly contrasted white and black. This, applied in a distinctly personal manner to book-illustration, is giving a more imaginative impulse to his pictorical conception. The fanciful portrait of Nicolas de Catinat, Louis XIV's famous Marshal, the conqueror of Savoy, from Andre Mary's poem, Le Doctrinaldes Preux (p. 82), is typical of M. Hermann-Paul's woodcut manner. He has lately cut a Danse Macabre series of striking originality and modern conception, and in the same medium he is illustrating Diderot's Sur les Femmes. M. Anatole France is credited with having discovered the very original talent of M. Louis Jou, who has justified the master's artistic perspicacity by the interpretative power of his illustrations for an edition de luxe of Les Opinions de Jerome Coignard, issued by La Societe des Cent Bibliophiles. M. Jou's imagination seems to be most forcibly inspired by the weird, the 84

THE WOODCUT IN FRANCE

horrible, the extraordinary, and among the more remarkable of his series of illustrative designs are those for Oscar Wilde's Salome^ Hello's Les Phi-sionomies des Saints, and J. K. Huysmans's Le Drageoir aux Epices. His individual expression upon the wood is admirably exemplified here in Le Garrotin (p. 77), with a vivid presentment of the squirming rhythms of the terrible dance and its fascination for the beholders. In Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol (p. 83), M. Gabriel Daragnes has found inspiration for a set ofwoodcuts, severely simple in design, which take their place suggestively with the text. The awful dreary monotony of the prison exercise-yard is pitifully expressed in the heavy lagging tread of the prisoners. How alertly adaptable is his pictorial imagination the artist shows in his illustrations to La MainEfichantee of Gerard de Nerval. It is interesting to find M. Leon Pichon, the publisher of so many books in which woodcut is the favoured medium of the illustration, combining in his own person the three functions of printer, publisher, and engraver. The example given here {p. 83) of his free cutting interprets vivaciously one of the designs by that versatile artist M. Maxime Dethomas for Chateaubriand's La Campagne Romaine.

M. Victor Achener is an illustrator of fertile invention with something of the older manner of wood-engraving. The specimen of his work reproduced is from the illustrations to an Alsatian poem of the twelfth century.

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