DOI Heft:
No. 57 (December 1897)
DOI Artikel:Mourey, Gabriel: A French wood-engraver: Auguste Lepère
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18390#0181
Auguste Lcpere
FRENCH WOOD-ENGRAVER: personal originality, alike in his mode of looking at
AUGUSTE LEPERE. BY things and in the way he reproduces them. With
GABRIEL MOUREY. a deep knowledge of all the secrets of the draughts
man's art, he has one great merit, among man)
" Lepf.re, unique artist of his kind ! others—namely, in never being cramped in the
An engraver, dependent on no one for expression of his ideas, in always succeeding in
his drawings. A draughtsman who engraves his developing them to their fullest extent,
own work on wood ! " There is no trickery or make-believe in all this.
Such are the terms applied to the artist whose Where the painter by a dexterous touch, more or
work and whose genius I propose to analyse, by less patent to the eye, may succeed in deceiving
one of the most experienced craftsmen of to-day— the beholder, the draughtsman must, on the con-
the engraver, Felix Bracquemond. trary, show thorough self-control and complete
And a unique artist he is, in truth, combining a acquaintance with his art. Each imperfection,
rare gift of observation with a keen and very per- each awkwardness, each careless stroke appears
sonal sense of truth and an imagination full of the here in all its nakedness, whereas a happy touch of
most delightful fancy. Lepere is an incomparable colour might have covered up the defects. The
draughtsman, surmounting all sorts of difficulties art of drawing is an art par excellence, "the only
with an ease which many must envy him ; an en- plastic art," according to Bracquemond's very cate-
graver, too, of the first rank, handling with equal gorical definition. It would seem as though our
facility the knife or the burin, equally at home in contemporaries are beginning to understand it
relief engraving or in etching; also a lithographer of better than did the generations who preceded
remarkable flexibility and breadth of touch. He them, proof of which is seen in the popularity now
excels, in fact, in every branch of his art. Every- attending the revival of original plates,
thing he touches bears the impress of a truly " It is incontestable," wrote Ph. Burty in 1867,
"un noyk"
XII. No. 57.— December, 1897.
from a lithograph by auguste lepere
143
FRENCH WOOD-ENGRAVER: personal originality, alike in his mode of looking at
AUGUSTE LEPERE. BY things and in the way he reproduces them. With
GABRIEL MOUREY. a deep knowledge of all the secrets of the draughts
man's art, he has one great merit, among man)
" Lepf.re, unique artist of his kind ! others—namely, in never being cramped in the
An engraver, dependent on no one for expression of his ideas, in always succeeding in
his drawings. A draughtsman who engraves his developing them to their fullest extent,
own work on wood ! " There is no trickery or make-believe in all this.
Such are the terms applied to the artist whose Where the painter by a dexterous touch, more or
work and whose genius I propose to analyse, by less patent to the eye, may succeed in deceiving
one of the most experienced craftsmen of to-day— the beholder, the draughtsman must, on the con-
the engraver, Felix Bracquemond. trary, show thorough self-control and complete
And a unique artist he is, in truth, combining a acquaintance with his art. Each imperfection,
rare gift of observation with a keen and very per- each awkwardness, each careless stroke appears
sonal sense of truth and an imagination full of the here in all its nakedness, whereas a happy touch of
most delightful fancy. Lepere is an incomparable colour might have covered up the defects. The
draughtsman, surmounting all sorts of difficulties art of drawing is an art par excellence, "the only
with an ease which many must envy him ; an en- plastic art," according to Bracquemond's very cate-
graver, too, of the first rank, handling with equal gorical definition. It would seem as though our
facility the knife or the burin, equally at home in contemporaries are beginning to understand it
relief engraving or in etching; also a lithographer of better than did the generations who preceded
remarkable flexibility and breadth of touch. He them, proof of which is seen in the popularity now
excels, in fact, in every branch of his art. Every- attending the revival of original plates,
thing he touches bears the impress of a truly " It is incontestable," wrote Ph. Burty in 1867,
"un noyk"
XII. No. 57.— December, 1897.
from a lithograph by auguste lepere
143