DOI Heft:
No. 88 (July, 1900)
DOI Artikel:Khnopff, Fernand: Francois Maréchal, a Liége etcher
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19785#0125
Francois Marechal
simple inn, commanding a view of
the broad river and the town, served
as his studio, which, by way of
furniture, boasted nothing beyond
a couple of seats, a large press,
bottles and phials of every sort of
shape, a fine grey cat, and notably
a rich and splendid collection of
butterflies, carefully pinned inside
their glass-lidded boxes, and, in
their superb, intact condition,
glistening like so many marvellous
gems. I hastened to accept the
offer made to show me his port-
folios, wherein, elaborately classed
and numbered, were stored his
drawings and engravings. These
drawings—mostly from the nude
—were serious, complete works,
and cruel, so to speak, in their
pitiless accuracy; while the en-
gravings, rather heavy in touch at
the outset, but growing more
refined by degrees, developed at
length extraordinary lightness and
flexibility, without any sacrifice,
moreover, of the artist's truly
scientific precision.
I observed that as the strokes upon
"the liege boulevards, evening" , . ,
from an etching by f. marechal the metal became more supple,
those on the paper grew more and
strong will and concentrative power—in a word, a more hard, to such an extent that some of the
native of the Ardennes. A modest room in a drawings had the appearance of those sculptors'
"under the snow (suburbs of liege)'
from an etching by f. marechal
103
simple inn, commanding a view of
the broad river and the town, served
as his studio, which, by way of
furniture, boasted nothing beyond
a couple of seats, a large press,
bottles and phials of every sort of
shape, a fine grey cat, and notably
a rich and splendid collection of
butterflies, carefully pinned inside
their glass-lidded boxes, and, in
their superb, intact condition,
glistening like so many marvellous
gems. I hastened to accept the
offer made to show me his port-
folios, wherein, elaborately classed
and numbered, were stored his
drawings and engravings. These
drawings—mostly from the nude
—were serious, complete works,
and cruel, so to speak, in their
pitiless accuracy; while the en-
gravings, rather heavy in touch at
the outset, but growing more
refined by degrees, developed at
length extraordinary lightness and
flexibility, without any sacrifice,
moreover, of the artist's truly
scientific precision.
I observed that as the strokes upon
"the liege boulevards, evening" , . ,
from an etching by f. marechal the metal became more supple,
those on the paper grew more and
strong will and concentrative power—in a word, a more hard, to such an extent that some of the
native of the Ardennes. A modest room in a drawings had the appearance of those sculptors'
"under the snow (suburbs of liege)'
from an etching by f. marechal
103