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As soon as I saw this etching by Max Slevogt of a black panther, I thought of Rainer Maria Rilke's 1902 or 1903 poem Der Panther, written as a response to Rilke's friend Rodin's urging to work directly from life. So as I had a bit of time on holiday this week, I tried to make my own version of Rilke's poem. I wouldn't call it a translation, as apart from retaining the four quatrains, I have ignored the form of the original - the metre and the rhyme. The best proper translation I know is that of my late friend Stephen Cohn in Neue Gedichte: New Poems (Carcanet, 1992). I didn't have this with me while I sat and struggled with the hilarious responses of Google Translate, but I did have the sensitive translation of Susan Ranson from Rainer Maria Rilke: Selected Poems (OUP, 2011). Back home I have taken the precaution of checking Google's grasp of German with the literal prose translation of Patrick Bridgwater in Twentieth-Century German Verse (Penguin, 1963). An...

Jules Bastien-Lepage was born in Damvillers, Meuse in 1848. After studying under Cabanel at the �cole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, Bastien-Lepage became a ground-breaking plein-air painter of realistic rural scenes, influenced by Courbet and the Barbizon School. Essentially a painter, Jules Bastien-Lepage only made 5 etchings himself, under the tutelage of L�opold Flameng, one of which is Retour des champs. In works such as this, Bastien-Lepage updated Millet's spiritual admiration of the peasant class into an unflinching reportage. Jules Bastien-Lepage, Retour des champs Etching, 1878 Most etchings of the art of Bastien-Lepage are, like this portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, interpretative etchings by others after Bastien-Lepage paintings. In addition to his landscapes, Bastien-Lepage was a sought-after and very accomplished portraitist, though I feel his heart was in his rural scenes. Ricardo de Los Rios, Sarah Bernhardt Etching after Jules Bastien-Lepage, 1879 Jules Bastien-Lepage influenc...

Eug�ne Boudin actually took part in the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874, but he has never been regarded as one of the Impressionists. He did play a key role in the development of the movement, though, as mentor to his friend Claude Monet. It was Boudin who encouraged Monet to paint, and it was while painting alongside Boudin at Honfleur that the 18-year-old Monet received the revelation of his artistic vision. After Boudin had set up his easel and begun to paint, Monet wrote, "I looked on with some apprehension, then more attentively and suddenly it was as if a veil was torn away; I had understood, had grasped what painting could be; by the sole example of this painter absorbed in his art and independence of effort, my own destiny was made clear." Boudin was born in Honfleur in 1824, so was sixteen years Monet's senior. The two men remained close until Boudin's death in Deauville in 1898; it even seems likely that the word "Impression", which so infur...

I intend this post to be first in a short series about the important fore-runners or precursors of Impressionism. Although the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874 is regarded as an earthquake moment in the history of art, there had been plenty of warning tremors in the years leading up to it. The roots of Impressionism lie most obviously in the plein-art painters and printmakers of the Barbizon School, and I shall in due course be looking at Barbizon artists such as Camille Corot, Charles-Fran�ois Daubigny, Charles-�mile Jacque, Jean-Fran�ois Millet, and Th�odore Rousseau. The Barbizon artists were inspired by the example of the English painter John Constable, just as the Impressionists were inspired by J. M. W. Turner. There were also plenty of artists working outside Barbizon with similar aims of capturing fleeting sensations of light and shade and representing the landscape as our minds actually apprehend it. Most of these had some contact with the Barbizon group, and my first su...

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...

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...