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The French art critic L�on Roger-Mil�s is best-known today for his 1897 book Art et Nature , which included original etchings by Pissarro, Renoir, Besnard, and Renouard among other Impressionist delights. So I was interested to acquire a copy of the only book of poems by Roger-Mil�s, Les Veill�es Noires (Gloomy Evenings), published in 1889 by Paul Ollendorf, in an edition of 400 copies. I knew it was illustrated with original etchings. Surely it also would be full of Impressionist masterpieces. Well, not quite. Instead,  Les Veill�es Noires is an object lesson in looking down the wrong end of the telescope. That's not to say the etchings - brilliantly interpreted and printed by Auguste and Eug�ne Del�tre - aren't good. Some of them are fantastic. But the artists chosen by Roger-Mil�s to illustrate this milestone book are a roll-call of talented men who missed out on their place in art history by sticking with the academic aesthetic of the Salon de Paris and turning their back

The great pre-Nazi flowering of German Expressionism is so striking a cultural phenomenon that it is tempting to feel that the whole movement was crushed under the jackboot, never to revive. But of course art has its underground streams that re-emerge when the conditions are right, and so the aesthetics of Expressionism found a new flowering in Germany post WWII. If I use the term Neo-Expressionist to define the art of Carl-Heinz Kliemann, it is only to mark this generational divide - otherwise, his work seems to me completely in line with that of the pre-war Expressionists. Two of these, Max Kaus and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, were his teachers at the Hochschule f�r Bildende K�nste Berlin from 1945-1950. My colour woodcuts by Carl-Heinz Kliemann were made in 1962 for an edition of the Book of Genesis published by K�the Vogt Verlag. They show the influence of Picasso, for sure, and also Matisse I think, but they are wonderfully confident and expressive works. 2000 copies were printed, with

Francisque de Saint-�tienne was born in Montpellier in 1824. A landscape painter and etcher, Saint-�tienne was a pupil of Jules Laurens. He exhibited at the Salon de Paris from 1857-1863, also exhibiting four landscape etchings at the International Exhibition in London in 1862. He also published etchings with Cadart's Soci�t� des Aquafortistes. My etching dates from 1860, and is I think fairly representative of his work. It shows the untamed wildness of the Balearic island of Formentera, before any thought of today's tourism. Francisque de Saint-�tienne, Formentera Etching, 1860 In 1863 Francisque de Saint-�tienne returned to Montpellier from Paris, and ceased to send work for exhibition in the capital, exhibiting only in the regional exhibitions of the Soci�t� artistique de l'H�rault. His name is sometimes spelled Francisc de Saint-�tienne; his true name was Louis Francisc Hippolyte Bessodes de Roquefeuille. He died in Montpellier in 1885.

A good artistic quiz question would be: What nationality was Fr�d�rique �milie O'Connell? The answer is neither French nor Irish, but German. The painter and etcher Fr�d�rique �milie Auguste O'Connell, n�e Miethe, was born in Potsdam in 1823 and died in Paris in 1885. An early devotion to drawing marked her out for an artistic career, and at the age of 18 she went to Berlin to study under Charles Joseph B�gas. She then continued her studies in Brussels, where she married in 1844. In 1853 she settled in Paris, establishing an atelier in Montmartre. Fr�d�rique �milie O'Connell threw herself with fervour into the artistic and social life of Paris, and her salon was frequented by writers as well as artists, notably Alexandre Dumas fils and Th�ophile Gautier. She also took many female students, and the prospectus of her course of studies is given in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 15 Novembre 1859. Fr�d�rique �milie O'Connell: Prospectus of studies She exhibited at the Paris Sal

It's now three years since I first posted about Marcel Roux, and I thought I had probably said all I had to say. But two recent acquisitions make me want to revisit this passionate and brilliant man. The first is one of Roux's rare individual etchings, L'�chou�e, as printed in the revue Byblis in 1923, after Roux's death, in brown ink on Lafuma wove paper. Most of Marcel Roux's original etchings were conceived and published in series, such as La Danse Macabre, Les Passions, Filles de Joie, and Les Sept Paroles; whether the enigmatic and dramatic L'�chou�e was intended to stand alone or to form part of a linked cycle, I do not know. I have to admit I don't quite know how to translate the title - the verb �chouer means to fail, but I think this man may be intended to be shipwrecked, in which case the translation would be something like Washed Up; help from fluent French speakers will be gratefully received. No date is given, but I believe all Roux's etchi

Francis Picabia is, of course, far from unknown. As the spokesman of the Cubist Section d'Or at the Armory Show in New York in 1913, and as the agent provocateur of Dada and Surrealism, Picabia became - with his close friend Marcel Duchamp - the prototypical modern artist. Disputatious, argumentative, controversial, witty, devil-may-care, Francis Picabia must have sparked a million conversations about the nature of art and the role of the artist. So it comes as something of a shock to discover another side to Picabia: his successful career as a Post-Impressionist, working under the direct influence and early encouragement of Sisley and Pissarro. It's as if Damian Hirst had begun as a Pre-Raphaelite, or Marina Abramovic were to suddenly unveil a hidden stash of genteel watercolours of flowers in vases. Picabia's Post-Impressionist phase lasted roughly from 1902 to 1908, and ended abruptly with his discovery of Cubism in 1909. One of his dealers, Danthon of the prestigious Ga

Wladislaw Skoczylas (1883-1934) is considered the father of modern Polish wood engraving, and most of the other artists in this post studied under him. Skoczylas studied at the art academy in Krakow, the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, and in the Paris studio of �mile-Antoine Bourdelle. From 1910 he devoted a large part of his work to etching, and from 1923 turned from etching to specialize in wood engraving. From 1928 Wladislaw Skoczylas taught at the Department of the Graphic Arts in the Applied Art School in Warsaw, where he inspired and influenced a whole generation of Polish wood engravers. Skoczylas exhibited in the show Art Polonais at the 1921 Salon de la Soci�t� Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and was kept in public eye in France by exhibitions of his wood engravings at the Galerie Zak. Skoczylas also continued to paint throughout his career, and regularly exhibited at the Salon d'Automne, of which he was a member. Wladislaw Skoczylas, Brigands pour un tr�sor Wood engravi