Studio: international art (6.1896)

Modern Colour Engraving

Nature's countless prisms by means of super-
posed copper plates. I think I was one of the
first—it was about 1883, on the occasion of the
publication of a book on " La Francaise a, Travers
les Ages "—to attempt, with the assistance of the
excellent engraver, Eugene Gaujean, the task of
reviving the methods of the old masters of the
eighteenth century. Timid and uncertain at first,
Gaujean was not long in gaining confidence and
power, and in the course of a few years he produced
some really remarkable colour work as illustrations
to modern books or new editions; for Gaujean is a

Bertrand, M. Eugene Dekitre, and his pupil Mile.
Marie Jacounchikoff.

M. Bertrand, who is a better engraver than a
draughtsman, has attempted to revive the Parisian
types and street scenes. His Place Pigalle, his
Moulin de la Galette, and his various engravings
illustrating the Balades dans Paris, are most in-
geniously conceived, albeit the drawing is poor;
but the work which places him in the front rank of
his art is his rendering of a water-colour by Felicien
Rops, Le Scandale, a most delicate piece of com-
position, with seven or eight figures, which he has

FROM A COLOURED ENGRAVING BY MARIE JACOUNCHIKOFF

most expert line engraver, excellent in dry point,
in aquafortis, and with the burin. His defect is
that he is too cold and minute, for the colour-plate
often needs to be almost roughly handled and not
simply tickled with the delicacy indispensable in
the black.

And more recently, with the evolution of art
which is beginning to raise above the common-
place all the new-comers, several painter-engravers
have appeared on the scene, first of all with simple
and primitive studies, which, however, developed
later into curious plates of quite modern handling
and in no way resembling the models of the last
century. Of these the cleverest are M. Albert

just completed for Pellet, the well-known dealer in
modern plates. The engraver has here achieved
such reality in his colourings that the reproduction
may very well challenge comparison with the
original itself, an exquisite Dutch interior, wherein
a pretty runaway girl is seen surrounded, on her
return home, by a group of relations and friends.

Eugene Delatre also fails in his drawing, but he
is young enough to master this deficiency, and, as
it is, his numerous works entitle him to a foremost
place among the innovators in colour-engraving.
Happily, he has not attempted to follow the tra-
ditions of the Janinets and Debucourts, but has
applied himself to modern art, which, while vigorous

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