Eye Candy for Today: Eugène Bléry etching

L'arbre aux racines (Tree with Roots), Eugene Blery, etching
L'arbre aux racines (Tree with Roots), Eugene Blery, etching (details)

L’arbre aux racines (Tree with Roots), Eugène Bléry, etching on chine collé, roughly 5×7″ (11 x 16 cm), in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, DC, which haas both zoomable and downloadable versions of the image.

A wonderful evocation of a deep forest scene, showing the effectiveness of just value and texture to convey mood and atmosphere. The images on the NGA site are actually much higher resolution than the detail crops I’ve provided above.

Chine collé refers to a technique in which a print is made on delicate or thin paper, supported by a thicker material during the printing process

 
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Oleg Denisenko (revisited)

Oleg denisenko, Ukrainian artist
Oleg denisenko, Ukrainian artist

Oleg Denisenko is a Ukrainian printmaker, painter, calligrapher and sculptor who I first featured in 2007, and again in 2012.

His wonderfully eccentric subjects center on figures with elaborate costumes, intricately detailed an accompanied by a range of curious objects. He plays with proportion and scale and varying degrees of exaggeration.

Denisenko appears to vary the color of his printing inks an papers and also works in full color at times.

He shares a website called Antiqvitas Nova with his father, filmmaker Alexander Denisenko (in which they spell their name Denysenko with a “y”, though it’s listed in multiple other sources with the spelling I’m using here).

For more, see my previous two posts on Oleg Denisenko (linked below).

 
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Eye Candy for Today: Francis Seymour Hayden etching

The Lovers Walk, No 1, Francis Seymour Hayden, etching and drypoint
The Lovers Walk, No 1, Francis Seymour Hayden, etching and drypoint

The Lovers’ Walk, No. 1, Francis Seymour Hayden, etching and drypoint, roughly 9 x 13″ (23 x34 cm); in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, look for both download and zoom links under the image.

This deceptively simple etching by the British painter and printmaker (active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) uses sweeping, seemingly casual lines to create texture — and, in effect, color — in a composition that invites you to step into the image. Notice the small, delicately suggested figures to the right of the first grouping of trees (images above, second from bottom).

 
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Some early work by M.C. Escher

Some early work by M.C. Escher
Some early work by M.C. Escher

Many people are aware of the graphic work of Dutch printmaker M.C. Escher that bends logic and presents mind-boggling visions of impossible worlds and structures. Fewer have seen many of his earlier works, that are much more straightforward and “possible” (if sometimes fanciful).

Here are a few examples.

For more images and info, see my previous posts on M.C. Escher.

 
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Eye Candy for Today: Whistler etching, Fumette

Fumette, etching whistler
Fumette, etching whistler (details)

Fumette, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, etching, roughly 6 x 4″ (16 x 11 cm)

Link is to zoomable version on Google Art Project, original of this version of the print is in the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery.

You can see other versions of the print in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

In this portrayal of his mistress Heloise — who was known as “Fumette” because of her temper — Whistler has brought his considerable etching skills to a study of value contrasts, darks against lights and lights against darks in her clothing and in the framing of her face by her dark hair.

I particularly love how loose and casual his hatching appears in the lower areas of the skirt.

Whistler created a number of etchings of Fumette, some of which you can also see on the site of the Freer Gallery.

 
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Eye Candy for Today: Max Klinger’s At the Gate

At the Gate (Am Thor), Max Klinger; etching and engraving
At the Gate (Am Thor), Max Klinger; etching and engraving (details)

At the Gate (Am Thor), Max Klinger; etching and engraving; roughy 18 x 12″ (45 x 31 cm). Link is to the impression the collection of the National Gallery, DC, whih has both a downloadable and zoomable version of the image (and no longer requires an account to download high-res images). There is also a zoomable version on the Google Art Project.

Max Klinger was a German Symbolist artist active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Though he was also a painter, Klinger was known primarily for his graphics in the form of etchings, drypoint, aquatint and engraving — sometimes combining multiple techniques in a single plate, as he did here.

This print is from a series titled A Love, Opus X, which he dedicated to Arnold Böcklin, a Swiss Symbolist by whom he was greatly influenced — to the point of doing a beautiful etching version of Böcklin’s famous painting Isle of the Dead.

 
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