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In 1878, the publishers C. Marpon and E. Flammarion published a lavishly illustrated edition of �mile Zola�s novel L�Assommoir. The title page had a wood engraving of the central character Gervaise by Fortun� Louis M�aulle after a drawing by Andr� 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, Fr�d�ric Regamey, Henri Gervex, Daniel Vierge, Maurice Leloir, Georges Bellenger, and Fran�ois Feyen-Perrin. There are 62 plates in all, and four of them are by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. La descente des ouvriers Wood engraving by Fortun� M�aulle 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 � l�eau-forte , to which many of these artists (though not Renoir) had contributed. I suspect t

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 i

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.

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.&quo

Felix Meseck was born in Danzig in 1883, and died in Holzminden in 1955. Meseck studied at the Fine Art Academies in Berlin and K�nigsberg, 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 oppo

When I wrote my post A walk along High Street, I was aware that three of Eric Ravilious's evocative lithographs of shop fronts for High Street had first been published in the journal Signature: A Quadrimestrial of Typography and Graphic Arts , with an appreciation by John Piper. This short article, entitled "Lithographs by Eric Ravilious of Shop Fronts", was published in March 1937, while the book did not appear until the following year. What I had not realised was that the three plates in Signature varied significantly from those in the book. When I first noticed this, I thought it was merely a matter of variant colourways, but the more I look at these day tradings beautiful prints the more variations I see. I won't spoil the fun of this spot-the-difference game by pointing out every detail, but will simply put the two versions next to each other. All were printed by the Curwen Press, where the lithographs were executed directly onto the lithographic stones. Eric

"Say something, Edith." This catchphrase in my wife's family, spoken whenever anyone is feeling too tired or bored to amuse themselves, took my fancy long before I knew anything about the man who coined it, Claude Flight, or the wonderful group of linocut artists he inspired, the Grosvenor School. The Grosvenor School artists include Cyril Power, Sybil Andrews, Eileen Mayo, Lill Tschudi , Ethel Spowers, Dorrit Black, and Eveline Symes, as well as Claude Flight himself, and his life-partner Edith Lawrence. Flight founded the Grosvenor School of Modern Art with Iain MacNab, Cyril Power and Sybil Andrews, and taught there from 1926-1930. After that, he taught informally at summer schools in his neolithic chalk cave at Chantemesle on the banks of the Seine, which he had bought while serving in France in WWI. The Grosvenor School of Modern Art was located in London, at 33, Warwick Square. William Kermode, At 33, Warwick Square Woodcut, 1930 Born in 1881, Walter Claude Flight w