Studio: international art (58.1913)

Wood-Engraving for Colour

and exquisite artist Mr. Lucien
Pissarro. Their artistic motive, as
well as their technical method, is
entirely different. Wholly inde-
pendent of Japanese methods,
Mr. Pissarro's aim is to follow
the traditions of the fifteenth-
century woodcutters. Conceiving
his designs primarily for book-
illustration and adornment, he
cuts them on the boxwood with
the graver—not the knife—making
the various colour-blocks as re-
quired. And these he prints with
the printing-press—in the regular
printer's inks—fixed in the page-
formes together with the type.

A refined fancy and dainty in-
vention inform all Mr. Pissarro's
prints, and when he brightens his
delicate tones with gold, he uses it
—as Mr. Theodore Roussel uses
it in his beautiful colour-prints
from metal plates—as he might
use any other tone in its appro-
priate place in the colour-scheme,
not in the vulgar, inartistic way
that Bonnet, the eighteenth-cen-
tury French colour-print maker,
employed gold, merely to enhance
the commercial value of his
prints. Gold Cloud, reproduced
here, is an illustration to the
"lady disdainful " by edmondo lucchesi charming little book, "The Queen

of the Fishes," and shows a true

Lucchesi, talking of his methods, says " I try to colourist's use of gold, as do those exquisite
make every line speak if possible, and strive to little circular designs adorning "Le Livre de Jade,"
arrange these lines in a rhythmical manner, like one of the most delightful books yet issued by Mr.
waves of sound. In order to attain this I cover Pissarro from the Eragny Press in Hammersmith,
my drawing with a sheet of glass, and on this with Mr. Pissarro is now engaged on an important series
body-colour and black I keep on altering my of woodcuts in colours from the designs of his
design, adding or eliminating lines or masses of distinguished father, the late Camille Pissarro.
colour till there remains only what is essential. I There has been no more important addition to
make my drawing directly on the wood-block, ink it, the ranks of the wood-engravers for colour than
and cut out the white spaces with a sharp penknife, Mr. E. A. Verpilleux, a young artist who expresses
that is all. In many instances I overlay my block his pictorial vision through the medium with
with a semi-hard substance, on which I draw, and marked individuality and rare charm. At a recent
into which I cut with the greatest facility, and this exhibition at Messrs. Colnaghi and Obach's he
becomes like well-tempered steel under a press, showed a remarkable group of colour-prints, dis-
This explains the clearness of the lines, such as tinguished and original in conception and execu-
one finds in small boxwood engravings, but rarely tion. The Studio has already reproduced one
in woodcuts of this size." example of his work; another is reproduced else-

Quite apart from all the work we have just been where in this number (p. 319), and others, it is
discussing are the delicate woodcuts of that rare hoped, may follow. Mr. Verpilleux should go far.

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