DOI issue:
No. 184 (July 1912)
DOI article:The plaquettes and medals of Henry Nocq
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20778#0127
The Plaquettes and Medals of Henry Nocq
the general point of view and it must be recog-
nised that most of our artists of to-day have
broken the link which bound them to the
masters of the past, thus deliberately depriving
themselves of the benefits acquired by the ex-
periences of their predecessors.
Possibly modern workmanship has something
to do with the decadence of an art which men
like Warin, Duvivier and Dupre carried to so
great a height. Engravers of this type would
work months, often even years, at a medal,
but nowadays things have completely changed.
BRONZE PLAQUETTE BY HENRY NOCQ
“The invention of the trick of reducing”—as
M. Nocq well expresses it—“and the consequent
evasion of the long apprenticeship and painful
work in a particularly hard trade, would seem
to have placed ‘ the medal ’ within the reach of
all sorts of sculptors. Any sort of low relief can
always be reduced on steel and dubbed ‘ medal9
by artists without conscience and collectors of
no particular delicacy ; therefore ‘ medallistsJ are
many nowadays, and ‘ medals ’ abound. But
it is hard to say whether an invention which,
commercially, shows such rapid progress is good
or bad from the artistic point of view.”
The artists of other days, on the other hand,
down to those of the Second Empire, owed
much to their respect for tradition, their skill in
BRONZE PLAQUETTE BY HENRY NOCQ
drawing and modelling. This regard for
tradition has entirely vanished to-day ; never-
theless we possess an admirable set of
BRONZE PLAQUETTE BY HENRY NOCQ
I03
the general point of view and it must be recog-
nised that most of our artists of to-day have
broken the link which bound them to the
masters of the past, thus deliberately depriving
themselves of the benefits acquired by the ex-
periences of their predecessors.
Possibly modern workmanship has something
to do with the decadence of an art which men
like Warin, Duvivier and Dupre carried to so
great a height. Engravers of this type would
work months, often even years, at a medal,
but nowadays things have completely changed.
BRONZE PLAQUETTE BY HENRY NOCQ
“The invention of the trick of reducing”—as
M. Nocq well expresses it—“and the consequent
evasion of the long apprenticeship and painful
work in a particularly hard trade, would seem
to have placed ‘ the medal ’ within the reach of
all sorts of sculptors. Any sort of low relief can
always be reduced on steel and dubbed ‘ medal9
by artists without conscience and collectors of
no particular delicacy ; therefore ‘ medallistsJ are
many nowadays, and ‘ medals ’ abound. But
it is hard to say whether an invention which,
commercially, shows such rapid progress is good
or bad from the artistic point of view.”
The artists of other days, on the other hand,
down to those of the Second Empire, owed
much to their respect for tradition, their skill in
BRONZE PLAQUETTE BY HENRY NOCQ
drawing and modelling. This regard for
tradition has entirely vanished to-day ; never-
theless we possess an admirable set of
BRONZE PLAQUETTE BY HENRY NOCQ
I03