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I've recently acquired a run of the Leipzig art revue Zeitschrift f�r Bildende Kunst from its founding in 1866 through to 1901. Especially in the 1890s, when the emphasis switches from interpretative etchings to original works, it provides a good overview of the German art of the day. There isn't the revolutionary zeal of a journal such as Pan, but that gives the more cutting edge art a more clearly defined context - we can see both where it came from and where it's headed. The four landscapes in this post were all published in Zeitschrift f�r Bildende Kunst, Neue Folge IX, 1898. They treat similar motifs in the same medium, but vary dramatically in feel. They work steadily through from a fairly conventional realism, to Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and finally to Expressionism. I admire all four prints, but particularly like Else Ruest's conventional but tenderly-observed landscape and Walter Leistikow's darkly brooding inscape. The two could hardly be more di

With his blockbuster exhibition at the Royal Academy, A Bigger Picture, David Hockney has achieved the almost impossible. He has got the British public excited about art. I don't mean the people who usually go to exhibitions and buy art books, I mean people who normally wouldn't have any interest in an exhibition, or any opinion save, "A child of two could do it." Having an aversion to crowds, I haven't seen the show, only the catalogue. Friends who have seen it have divided sharply into two - those who are exhilarated by the vibrant colour, the ambition, and the artist's responsiveness to the landscape and seasons of his native Yorkshire, and those who find the whole thing shallow and glib. The iPad drawings have come in for particular scorn, while the charcoal drawings seem to have pleased everyone. The iPad and iPhone drawings reproduce well, but it may be that the lack of surface, and that vital sense of the craftsman's hand, is disappointing in a gall

I really love this etching by the almost forgotten German Symbolist Alexander Frenz. Frenz seems to have drawn much of his inspiration from myth and fairytale, as in this mysterious scene in which a hooded man summons a tree nymph out of the stump of a blasted tree, with music he is playing on an antique stringed instrument. The etching was first published in Originalradirungen des K�nstlerklubs St. Lucas, D�sseldorf, Heft 1 (c.1893). This copy as published by E. A. Seemann, Leipzig, for Zeitschrift f�r Bildende Kunst, N. F. IV, 1893. Alexander Frenz, Idylle Etching with aquatint, 1893 Alexander Frenz was born in Rheydt in 1861. Frenz studied at the D�sseldorf Kunstakademie and Malerschule, and in the atelier of Franz von Lenbach. Like many German artists of his day, Alexander Frenz was profoundly influenced by the Symbolist art of Franz von Stuck. He died in D�sseldorf in 1941.

Emil Rudolf Weiss (1875-1942) was one of those multi-talented people whose very versatility has been a hindrance to their lasting fame. He's most remembered now as a typographer - a designer both of books and of typefaces - and this aspect of his work is to be celebrated in a lavish book by Gerald Cinamon to be published by the Incline Press. Weiss was a poet, a designer of wallpapers and fabrics and furniture and stained glass and ceramics and goodness knows what else, as well as a painter and a printmaker. It's in that last capacity that I want to write about him, as I have just come into possession of one, and I suspect two, of his etchings. Emil Rudolf Weiss, Ein Paar Blumen Etching, 1896 The first etching, Ein Paar Blumen, is definitely by Emil Rudolf Weiss. It is signed with his initials and monogram in the plate, and it is in the Jugendstil (German Art Nouveau) style of which he was one of the chief proponents. This very strikingly composed colour etching was published i

The painter, etcher, and wood engraver Gaston Nick was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, around 1885. He went to Paris to study art, but his career does not appear to have taken off until the 1920s, when he emerges as an important book artist, illustrating works by writers such as Verlaine, Maupassant, and M�rim�e with original etchings. Prosper M�rim�e was Gaston Nick�s great-uncle. Among the most important of these books are Nick�s editions of the semi-autobiographical novel Jours de famine et de d�tresse by the Dutch/Belgian author N�el Doff (the source of my first batch of images), of M�rim�e's Colomba, and of 5 Contes de Guy de Maupassant (the source of second batch). All three of these works appeared in 1927-1928, the high-water mark of Gaston Nick's artistic career. Gaston Nick, The Family Etching, 1927 Gaston Nick, Mother and children Etching, 1927 Gaston Nick, Child with a kite Etching, 1927 Gaston Nick, Children at a shop window Etching, 1927 Gaston Nick, Canalside Etching, 1

I haven't written much on this blog about engravers, perhaps because I started a rather over-ambitious post about engraving in general that still languishes in my unfinished files. So today I'll just talk about one of my favourite twentieth-century engravers, Ferdinand Springer. Not only do I admire the formal precision and grace of his work, I feel an affinity with his choice of subjects, which tend to the philosophical and metaphysical. Late in his career he produced editions of the Tao Te Ching and the Bardo Thodol, and the two earlier sets of prints I have by Springer are for similar subjects - a 1947 edition of Paul Val�ry's Socratic dialogue Eupalinos ou l'Architecte and a 1948 edition of Plato's Mythe de la Caverne. Ferdinand Springer, Eupalinos ou l'Architecte IV Engraving, 1947 Ferdinand Springer, Eupalinos ou l'Architecte VI Engraving, 1947 The line engravings for Eupalinos are a masterclass in how to handle an engraver's burin. Although the en

Raoul Dufy, Sailor Lithograph with pochoir colouring, 1920 PRAYER after Guillaume Apollinaire, Pri�re When I was a small child My mother dressed me in blue and white O Blessed Virgin Do you still love me I know I will love you To my dying day Even if it�s all over And I don�t believe in heaven or hell I don�t believe I don�t believe any more That seaman who was saved Because he never once forgot To say his Hail Mary Was like me was like me translation � Neil Philip 2011 Raoul Dufy, Amphitrite Etching, 1930 I wish all my readers a merry Christmas, a happy Hannukah, and a peaceful and healthy New Year. I promise I will resume regular posts when circumstances allow. In the meantime I hope you enjoy these two prints by one of my favourite artists, Raoul Dufy, paired with a poem by his friend Guillaume Apollinaire.