armstrongfineart

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This is why we should never stop supporting museums.  Great article by Sopie Hardach!

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Jeanne Soyer Lemerle (1879-1967), who does not seem to have taken on her husband’s last name of Soyer when signing her work, was an accomplished artist.  Despite being married she signed some works with her maiden name.  Little is known of her, except that she assisted her husband, Théophile Soyer (1853-1940) in his work as an enamel painter.   She married into a family of artists.  Her husband’s father, Paul Constant Soyer (1832-1903) had the same trade as his son. Interestingly, Jeanne Lemerle was married to a man whose paternal grandmother was an artist. Louise-Charlotte Soyer, née Landon, who was active in the 19th century, was an engraver (etching, pure-line engraving, and wood engraving).  She was the daughter of the painter and book dealer Charles-Paul Landon (1791-0826), and married another book dealer, whose last name was Soyer, and was established rue du Doyenné, in Paris.  She was active with certainty from 1821 to 1839, and possibly up to 1851. She engraved decorative models of furniture, jewelry, as well as portraits.

This lithograph is dated 1896 in the stone.  Jeanne was then just seventeen years old, and married!  This artistic precociousness certainly explains why she married into an artistic trade and was able to pursue a life in the arts as a woman. Even her stylized monogram, JSLM, shows an attention to elegance unusual for such a young person.  The composition is dark, and conveys a sense of melancholy. One can’t help but wonder whether the woman, walking introspectively along a Parisian quay, is not Jeanne herself. The darkness is however broken by bright light on the woman’s face, and at the windows on the opposite riverside, which reflect into the troubled waters of the river.  These bright happy lights further strengthen the sense of solitude of the night walker.

This work betrays training in the drawing with charcoal at an early age.  The way she uses black, with white highlights shows a dexterity that comes from practice.  It is unclear who trained Jeanne Lemerle in this drawing technique.  For further reading on this practice of charcoal drawing and the use of black, refer to the amazing exhibition at the Getty, titled Noir. It was curated by Lee Hendrix, and comes with a phenomenal catalogue, well worth buying.

This stunning composition is printed on a beautiful sheet of chine paper.  It seems likely to have been part of a deluxe publication of some kind. We were unable to find out which one.

The Musée d’Orsay owns 163 works by Jeanne Soyer Lemerle.  Sadly, only one work has been photographed so far!

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Armstrong Fine Art will exhibit at the 2016 McNay Print Fair this weekend, March 5th and 6th.  I hope to visit with many of you.

http://www.mcnayart.org/events/event/2016-mcnay-print-fair

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Textures in Aquatint

Aquatint, which is an intaglio printmaking technique (generally in copper or zinc) is used to add tonal quality to a composition.  Instead of using lines, like it is done in straightforward etching, aquatint provides the ability to give prints “grayscale”.  While it was often used in black and white printmaking, it really came to life as a technique in color printmaking.  It remains today, for those inclined to create "painterly" prints, a technique of choice.

Personally, what attracts me to aquatint, is the texture.  Not only are the colors, or black, saturated; the overall compositions also feels fare more dimensional than it is in lithography, or with a silkscreen.  The fact that the plate embosses the sheet, and that the ink is raised above the surface of the paper, lends aquatints a strength that cannot be replicated in most printmaking techniques.  It is, in that sense, comparable to strong woodcuts, which will also emboss the paper, and leave clear traces of the matrix used to create the image.

I enlarged a few aquatints, for close inspection.  Note the “dots”, or ink “puddles”.  The latticework of the resin, which is cooked onto the plate before being etched, is very discernible; and its dimensionality is eye-catching.

While there are a few informative videos online showing what aquatint really is, I find that nothing completely satisfies my curiosity.  In the end, Wikipedia’s entry is still the most informative, in my opinion.

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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) Une Redoute au Moulin Rouge

Lithograph printed in black ink on wove paper.  1893. References: Delteil 65; Adriani 54; Wittrock 42. Extremely rare impression apart from the edition of 50, with only the left half of the image printed. Wittrock records only three known proofs with only the left half or the right half of the image printed. Signed with the artist’s red monogram stamp, lower right (Lugt 1338). Image: 11 ¼ x 9 ½ in. (287 x 242 mm). Sheet: 15 x 11 ⅛ in. (383 x 283 mm).

Provenance: • Collection of Dr. Heinrich Stinnes, Cologne, Germany • Auctioned by C.G. Boerner, November 10-11, 1932, Leipzig, Germany. • Private collection, France. • Armstrong Fine Art, catalogue, 2000. • Peter Bartlett, New York, NY.

In the foreground, a dancer rides on a donkey. It has been speculated that it is La Goulue, the stage name for Louise Weber (1866-1929).  She was then the most famous “act” in Montmartre, and her cancan, a particularly rowdy dance known as chahut (literally “ruckus”) drew crowds to Le Moulin Rouge.  While her features in this lithograph do not reflect contemporary photographs exactly, they are very close to other portraits by Toulouse-Lautrec of La Goulue at that time (Ill. 1, portrait of La Goulue, by Lautrec).

To her left, in the image’s right edge,Cha-U-Ka-O[1], the clowness who was often depicted by Lautrec, rides on a horse (Ill. 2, detail of a portrait of Cha-U-Ka-O, by Lautrec).

Both are part of a parade that was meant as a mockery of the Franco-Russian Alliance, which had been in the works since 1892 and was ratified by both nations at the end of 1893 and early in 1894. This rapprochement was regarded as one of convenience, against the alliance of Germany with Austria-Hungary (the so-called Dual Alliance).  Many artists found it preposterous to the point of making fun of it.  Of course, the irreverent Moulin Rouge just had to make a parody of a military parade, by assembling all of its characters into an eclectic assortment of mock soldiers showing their “might” (Ill. 3, an advertisement by Roedel, for this event).

The rearguard is made up of a man and a woman who likely were meant to be the personification of France and Russia. The woman in a worker’s apron, and who likely personifies Russia, looks robust and healthy.  She easily outflanks her male skinny companion.  This couple is also depicted in another lithograph by Toulouse-Lautrec that same year.  In this image, “France” is clearly shown as a scrawny man, who smokes, reads Paris Sport and wears the typical blue de travail (workers shirt, typically blue) and the accompanying soft casquette (cap) (see illustration below).

Our impression of this whimsical composition shows only the left side of this composition (Ill. 4, the full composition, as it was published).

According to Wittrock there were only three known proofs with only the left or the right half of the image printed.  We can trace this very impression back to the collection of Heinrich Stein in Germany in the 1920’s.  While the complete composition, printed in an edition of 50 does very occasionally surface on the open market, our impression is likely unique and has been kept in nearly perfect condition for all of these years.

[1] Cha-U-Ka-O, the name of a famous clowness at the Moulin Rouge was a play on the words chahut and chaos, literally “ruckus” and “chaos”.  This name is indicative of how rowdy the entertainment at that establishment really was.  Women, such as the two mentioned here, presented forms of entertainment not seen elsewhere in Paris.  This brought throngs of people to Montmartre, in search for thrills that could not be found in the central districts of the capital.