Studio: international art (22.1901)

Coloured Etchings in France.

necessary to make of reality a work of art. The
number of proofs printed by M. Pichon varies from
twenty-five to fifty.

M. Villon has more imagination and more esprit;
his hand is more various and more captivating;
some of his plates—Bernadettc, for example—being
of undoubted artistic value. This etching repre-
sents a lady in visiting costume seated on a sofa,
wearing a large hat, and a veil half covering her
face. Save for the yellow shade of the hair and
the trace of pink on the face, the plate is a mono-
chrome in the most delicate greys; the white
blouse of the figure remains white, paper-white.
Le Maquillage, Boudeuse, and Sur un Banc reveal
similar intimacy with feminine attitude. Of these
the best is Boudeuse, a woman in petticoat and
corset lying face-downwards on the bed, her
head buried in her folded arms. Le Pcre Noret,
and his latest work of this kind, Bibi la Puree, are
excellent examples of this kind ; while Le Major
Anglais, a piece of fine humour and delicate cari-
cature, is perhaps the best of all. M. Villon's
plates are never reproduced to a greater number
than twenty-five or thirty.

M. Georges Ey' Chenne is a young artist full of
promise. He studied the art of etching in colours
with M. Godin, and, like him, remains faithful to
the superposition process. Le Papillon Noir and
Les Anemones are lovely poems in colour, infinitely
delicate and subtle, but too minute, too " finnick-
ing" in execution, for they suggest excess of
labour and want of freedom. But M. Ey' Chenne
is an admirable colourist, as witness his Carpe,
which is an absolute little marvel in that respect,
and~could only have been produced by an artist of
the highest order. His plate, Les Maquereaux, is
too suggestive of the Japanese. In Marcliandes
de Pommes au Soleil the artist attempts bolder,
clearer effects, broader colours, more decorative
contrasts : a new faith seems to tempt him. He
prints from twelve to thirty impressions of his plates.

It only remains now to mention M. Eugene
Delatre, engraver and printer, to whom all the
artists I have mentioned owe a deep debt of
gratitude. Since his display at Durand-Ruel's, to
which I, together with M. Francis Jourdain, was
invited, in 1898, I have seen but little of his work,
yet I retain a keen remembrance of some of his
etchings, particularly Le Gosse qui Fume, Vieille
a la Fenctre, Deux Petites Filies, Marcel, and
Petite Maman. M. Clement-Janin appreciates
M. Delatre's gifts and style in these terms :
" Although some of his coloured prints are in
conception linear and decorative, many others are
100

"SPORTSMAN" BY BERNARD
HOUTET DE MONVEL

(By permission of M. C. Hessilc, Paris)