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I�ve posted before about some of the great names of twentieth-century French engraving�Jean-�mile Laboureur, Henri-Georges Adam, Ferdinand Springer. And there are more to come, such as Pierre Guastalla, the founder of La Jeune Gravure Contemporaine. Today I want to look at the man who, in my view, took the art of engraving to its dizziest heights, Roger Vieillard, born in Le Mans in 1907. Roger Vieillard, �conomie dirig�e Engraving, 1934 Gu�rin & Rault 11 (state v/v) Vieillard devoted himself to the engraved line almost from the moment he entered Stanley Hayter�s famed Atelier 17 in 1934. He soon established himself as a master of copper engraving, specializing particularly in surreal mythological/architectural scenes, realized with great fluidity and imbued with a sense of mystery. He believed that engraving was capable of effects impossible to achieve in drawing or painting. The Surrealist atmosphere that prevailed at Atelier 17 in the 1930s is thoroughly ebedded in Vieillard�s w

For those who remember my earlier post about the Czech artist Tavik Franti�ek �imon , I thought I would flag up a new book of interest, the first English translation of his Letters from a Voyage Around the World . This lively book was first published in Czech in 1928 but has been essentially unobtainable since. The translation is by David Pearson, with an introduction by the artist's grandson Michal Simon. I have an etching to share of a scene from Tavik Frantisek Simon's adventurous world trip, depicting beggars in Shanghai; it was published by the art revue Byblis in 1928. Tavik Frantisek Simon, Au quartier Chinois (Chinese beggars, Shanghai) Etching, 1928 Ref: Novak 480 For more information on the artist see the excellent Tavik Simon website here . This model of a single-artist website contains among much else a good selection of the drawings made by Simon on his travels in 1926 and 1927. The website for Letters from a Voyage Around the World is http://taviksimon.com , and

Underexposed: Female Artists and the Medium of Print is an exhibition on a subject close to my heart, the importance of female printmakers, and the relative neglect their art still receives. Regular readers of this blog will remember my posts on artists such as Ang�le Delasalle, Ghislaine de Menten de Horne, K�the Kollwitz, Laura Malcl�s-Masereel, Lill Tschudi, Norbertine Bresslern-Roth, Terry Haass, Tirzah Garwood (Ravilious), and others. Underexposed will run from 16 May to 19 June at Studio 3 Gallery, University of Kent School of Arts, Canterbury, with an associated programme of free lectures. It has been curated by Frances Chiverton and Lynne Dickens, and you can find out more about it here . I would reproduce the beautiful poster for the show, but I can't work out how to do so. Among the many artists included are Alison Wilding, Anne Desmet, Barbara Hepworth, Berthe Morisot (about whom I have a post-in-the-making), Bridget Riley, Cornelia Parker, Elisabeth Frink, Leonora Carri

I�ve posted before about Sylvester Rosa Koehler and his role as godfather of the American Etching Revival � the revival that consolidated (in the late 1870s and 1880s) around the New York Etching Club. Now I have a copy of one of his rarest and most sought-after publications, Original Etchings by American Artists , published in 1883 by Cassell and Company. There is no indication that I can see of any limitation, but the print-run must have been quite small, both because the book is so rare now and because it is very large and would have inevitably have been extremely expensive when issued. I say book, but my copy has completely disintegrated, mostly through time, and also because 4 of the 20 original etchings have been previously removed. Luckily, the remaining etchings are all in very good condition, and I also have all of Koehler�s informative if sometimes rather waffly text. The four missing plates are The Inner Harbor, Gloucester by Stephen Parrish; The Ponte Vecchio by Joseph Penn

It�s a while since I posted about the master of the Art Deco nude, �douard Chimot. Of course if Chimot were simply a depictor of the nude, there wouldn�t be much to say about him�boudoir pictures are boudoir pictures, and that�s it. But Chimot is a much more complex artist than that�one in whom the twin themes of Eros and Thanatos, Love and Death, are inextricably intertwined. �douard Chimot, Le caf�-concert maudit Colour etching with aquatint for La mont�e aux enfers, 1920 Of course Love sells better than Death, so sensuous nudes inevitably predominate in �douard Chimot�s work. But his obsession with prostitutes, drug addicts, and good girls gone bad, means that the spectre of death and destitution hovers behind and around Chimot�s nudes, turning them from decorative erotica into perverse memento mori. They are women �soumises � leurs passions mortelles et d�licieuses�, as the critic Andr� Warnod put it. �douard Chimot, La Mort Etching with aquatint for L'enfer, 1921 In my previou