International studio (49.1913)

Wood-Eggraving for Colour


“lady disdainful”

BY EDMONDO LUCCHESI

Lucchesi, talking of his methods, says “ I try to
make every line speak if possible, and strive to
arrange these lines in a rhythmical manner, like
waves of sound. In order to attain this I cover
my drawing with a sheet of glass, and on this with
body-colour and black I keep on altering my
design, adding or eliminating lines or masses of
colour till there remains only what is essential. I
make my drawing directly on the wood-block, ink it,
and cut out the white spaces with a sharp penknife,
that is all. In many instances I overlay my block
with a semi-hard substance, on which I draw, and
into which I cut with the greatest facility, and this
becomes like well-tempered steel under a press.
This explains the clearness of the lines, such as
one finds in small boxwood engravings, but rarely
in woodcuts of this size.”
Quite apart from all the work we have just been
discussing are the delicate woodcuts of that rare

and exquisite artist Mr. Lucien
Pissarro. Their artistic motive, as
well as their technical method, is
entirely different. Wholly inde-
pendent of Japanese methods,
Mr. Pissarro’s aim is to follow
the traditions of the fifteenth-
century woodcutters. Conceiving
his designs primarily for book-
illustration and adornment, he
cuts them on the boxwood with
the graver—not the knife—making
the various colour-blocks as re-
quired. And these he prints with
the printing-press—in the regular
printer’s inks—fixed in the page-
formes together with the type.
A refined fancy and dainty in-
vention inform all Mr. Pissarro’s
prints, and when he brightens his
delicate tones with gold, he uses it
—as Mr. Theodore Roussel uses
it in his beautiful colour-prints
from metal plates—as he might
use any other tone in its appro-
priate place in the colour-scheme,
not in the vulgar, inartistic way
that Bonnet, the eighteenth-cen-
tury French colour-print maker,
employed gold, merely to enhance
the commercial value of his
prints. Gold Cloud, reproduced
here, is an illustration to the
charming little book, “ The Queen
of the Fishes,” and shows a true
colourist’s use of gold, as do those exquisite
little circular designs adorning “Le Livre de Jade,”
one of the most delightful books yet issued by Mr.
Pissarro from the Eragny Press in Hammersmith.
Mr. Pissarro is now engaged on an important series
of woodcuts in colours from the designs of his
distinguished father, the late Camille Pissarro.
There has been no more important addition to
the ranks of the wood-engravers for colour than
Mr. E. A. Verpilleux, a young artist who expresses
his pictorial vision through the medium with
marked individuality and rare charm. At a recent
exhibition at Messrs. Colnaghi and Obach’s he
showed a remarkable group of colour-prints, dis-
tinguished and original in conception and execu-
tion. The Studio has already reproduced one
example of his work; another is reproduced else-
where in this number (p. 319), and others, it is
hoped, may follow. Mr. Verpilleux should go far.
299