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In 1986 I edited, with my friend Victor E. Neuburg, a collection of Charles Dickens's social criticism, under the title A December Vision . One of the pleasures of that project was researching visual images to match Dickens's texts on London's workhouses, prisons, and ragged schools. Illustrators such as George Cruickshank, Phiz, Watts Phillips, W.G. Mason, Kenny Meadows, William M'Connell, A. Henning, and various Punch cartoonists, enlivened the pages, along with work by two French artists, Gustave Dor� and Gavarni. But I don't recall ever coming across the searing etchings of Auguste Lan�on, created around 1880 to accompany the text La Rue � Londres by his friend Jules Vall�s, published in 1884. It's a shame as many of them perfectly illustrate the scenes of poverty and desperation that so strongly roused Dickens's sense of injustice and inequality. Auguste Lan�on, Un abreuvoir dans Tottenham-Court-Road Etching, 1884 Auguste Lan�on, Une ruelle dans Spita

Th�ophile-Alexandre Steinlen (1859-1923) is celebrated for his posters for the Chat Noir nightclub, and his lithographs of languid ladies with cats. But he also had a strong social conscience, and in this post I want to look at his powerful images of working men, and in particular his lithographs for the novel Les Gueules Noires (The Miners, literally The Black Mouths or Black Faces) by Emile Morel. This novel is a kind of companion piece to the more famous Germinal by Steinlen's friend Emile Zola. It was published in 1907 by E. Sansot, with 16 lithographs by Steinlen printed by Eug�ne Vernan. The ordinary edition on wove paper has no limitation, though it is not common. In addition to this trade edition there were 25 copies on Japon Imp�rial and 5 copies on Chine; these numbered copies have the lithographs in two states, in black as in the regular edition and in sanguine. I have no. 10 of the 25 copies on Japon. Here are the paper wraps, in both states: Th�ophile-Alexandre Steinle

The etcher F�lix Bracquemond was a towering figure in nineteenth-century French printmaking, a fact which was recognised when in 1900 he won the Grand prix de gravure at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Over the course of a long career he worked in various styles, producing over 800 prints, but essentially he is one of those figures who form a bridge between the Barbizon School and the Impressionists, having close links with both groups. His discovery of the woodcuts of Hokusai in the late 1850s is often seen as the start of French Japonisme. Paul Rajon, Bracquemond (en 1868) Etching, 1897 F�lix Bracquemond was born Joseph Auguste Bracquemond in Paris in 1833. Brought up in a stable, he entertained youthful dreams of becoming a circus rider. Around 1848, he was instead apprenticed to a lithographer. Taking drawing lessons in the evenings, Bracquemond was noticed by Guichard, a former pupil of Ingres. He persuaded the boy's parents to let him leave his apprenticeship and become

It's not surprising that many writers are also talented artists, and many artists also write. In some cases - David Jones is an obvious example - it's impossible to say which medium predominates. But I was still surprised to stumble across the accomplished etchings featured in this post, created by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1768, at the age of 18. William Unger, Goethe Etching, 1881 after the 1779 portrait in oils by Georg Oswald May Although he is remembered today as Germany's greatest writer, early in life Goethe was inclined to become a painter; his lifelong interest in art is evidenced in his book On Colour , and of course the hero of The Sorrows of Young Werther is an aspiring artist. While studying law in Leipzig from 1765-1768, Goethe took drawing lessons from Adam Friedrich Oeser, director of the Leipzig Academy, who became a key influence on him. It was Oeser who encouraged Goethe to take up etching, and taught him the technique. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, La