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Hester Sainsbury is yet another of the lost female artists of England between-the-wars. Successful and acclaimed in the 1920s, she vanishes from view following her marriage to the Vorticist painter, architect, and publisher Frederick Etchells in 1932. Writing in the Print Collector's Quarterly in 1934, Douglas Percy Bliss lamented, "Hester Sainsbury, once so clever with the multiple-tool, has disappeared." Hester Sainsbury, The Prayer of Manasses Wood engraving, 1929 The multiple tool is described by Joanna Selborne in her British Wood-Engraved Book Illustration 1904-1940 as "like a small chisel with a multi-grooved belly which cuts several parallel lines at a time." Hester Sainsbury used one to create the kneeling figure in her wood engraving The Prayer of Manasses, contributed to the Cresset Press Apocrypha in 1929. She was ahead of her time in her use of a multiple graver, anticipating the style of another important female wood engraver of the period, Mary E

Today is polling day for the UK General Election - one of the more interesting and unpredictable elections of my adult life. Only one thing is certain - the House of Commons is going to need revolving doors to cope with all the disillusioned and worn-out MPs losing their seats, and the fresh intake of naive newcomers replacing them. Le Parlement de Londres, soleil couchant Original etching by Gustave Greux after Claude Oscar Monet, 1904

To make up for my recent silence, I hope over the next month to complete a series of short posts on Fauve artists as printmakers. For no particular reason, I'll start today with Maurice de Vlaminck. Vlaminck was born in Paris in 1876. His father was Belgian (the name Vlaminck or Wlaminck means �Flemish�); his mother was from Lorraine. Both were musicians. Maurice de Vlaminck, Beaumont, Oise Etching, 1927 Despite this artistic background, Vlaminck originally intended to be a professional cyclist, and it has often been noted that his landscapes are like the glimpses of a passing cyclist, crouched low over the handlebars of his bike watching the world rush by. Maurice de Vlaminck, Nesles la Vall�e Etching, 1927 In 1896 a bout of typhoid fever put paid to Maurice de Vlaminck�s athletic ambition. Maurice de Vlaminck, Environs de Marines, Oise Etching, 1927 It was while on leave from his military service, on 18 June 1900, that Vlaminck had a chance encounter with Andr� Derain on a train.

In 1937, 1,052 of his works were removed from German museums by the Nazis, more than by any other artist. 29 choice canvases were selected for the infamous exhibition of Degenerate Art; and no doubt many others were destroyed. In 1941 he was expelled from the Reichskunstkammer, the German Artists� Association, and forbidden not just to exhibit or sell his work, but even to paint. However he continued creating art in secret, stockpiling hundreds of little watercolours, his �Unpainted Pictures�, which sing with vibrant colour.          So he must be a hero, right?          If only it weren�t for the inconvenient fact that this persecuted artist was also a keen, fully paid-up member of the Nazi party. He only joined the party in 1934, after Hitler had been elected Chancellor, and it may have been that this was a pragmatic, opportunistic move. Or perhaps he was seduced by Nazi dreams of a renewal of pure German folk culture. Or maybe he was an out-and-out fascist, who had supported the N

One of the great stories about the redemptive power of art can be found in Vasari�s life of Filippo Lippi. Vasari tells how Lippi was captured by Barbary pirates while out sailing off Ancona, and held as a slave in Algeria for 18 months. At his lowest ebb, Filippo Lippi plucked a charred stick from the ashes of a fire, and drew a portrait of his master on the wall�thus earning his freedom through his art.          There doesn�t seem to be any historical basis for this tale, but of course the truth of a story does not lie in factual accuracy. This episode was bound to appeal to artists themselves, and in 1819 Pierre-Nolasque Bergeret exhibited a painting based on it in the Salon de Paris. The story haunted Bergeret�s imagination, and nearly 20 years later he made an etching of the same subject, titled in the plate Philippo Lippi Esclave � Alger fait le portrait de son Ma�tre qui en r�compense lui donna sa libert�. There is also a pen-and-ink drawing of the scene in the Peabody Collectio

This wonderful scene of a self-absorbed tennis player trailed by three adoring acolytes is one of 19 etchings made between 1894 and 1896 by Eugen Kirchner,  a remarkable artist who has had the misfortune of being overshadowed by a younger man with a similar name, the Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Die Tennisspieler is usually dated to 1896, but it was probably made the previous year, as the 1895 etching Dame mit Spazierstock (also known as Dame im Zimmer), incorporates the tennis player composition, showing it as a painted panel above a door. Eugen Kirchner, Die Tennisspieler (The Tennis Player) Etching with aquatint, 1894-1896 Eugen Kirchner was born in Halle in 1865. A founder member of the Vienna Secession, Eugen Kirchner also exhibited with the Berlin Secession, and contributed to both Pan and Die Graphischen Kunste. He had a major exhibition of drawings, watercolours and etchings in Dresden in 1904. As an etcher, he is particularly noted for his mastery of aquatint, as in Di

The Art Nouveau painter and printmaker Adolf Zdrazila (sometimes spelled Zdrasila) was born in 1868 in Poruba, in what is now the Moravian-Silesian district of the Czech Republic, but was then part of Austria-Hungary. Zdrazila was ethnically Hungarian but culturally Austrian. Zdrazila's father was a tailor who used to go to Italy for work, and it was seeing the art treasures of Italy that awoke a love of art in the young Adolf. Adolf Zdrazila studied at the fine art academies of Vienna (under Lichtenfels) and Karlsruhe (under Leopold von Kalckreuth, Kallmorgen, and Sch�nleber). After that he spent some time in Paris, Brussels and Holland, before returning to Silesia. Here he benefited from the patronage of his friend Edmund Wilhelm Braun, director of the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Troppau, who commissioned various decorative schemes. Zdrazila exhibited at the Troppauer Museum in 1897 and in 1902, in which year he also showed at the Salon Pisko in Vienna. Zdrazila's first pri