Moods in drypoint
In his print series, La Femme, Albert Besnard combined etching and drypoint to explore the bleaker aspects of feminine existence.
A gruesome assemblage of social ills, many of the prints feature graphic depictions of a woman plagued by sickness, suicide, prostitution, infanticide and poverty.
Besnard’s masterful application of drypoint produced compositions evocative of her disturbed moods.
Albert Besnard, Flirtation (Le flirt), 1887
Henri Evenepoel, Absinthe-Drinker (La buveuse d’absinthe), 1899
Creatures of shadow
In the nineteenth century, French printmakers were very interested in the quality of darkness, depicting it both visually and iconographically.
Vampires, skeletons, ghosts, and other demons lurked in the shadowy corners of the fin-de-siècle imagination.
Symbolist artists often incorporated drypoint to represent such creatures in their quirky prints.
Odilon Redon, Cain and Abel (Caïn et Abel), 1886
Further reading
- Louis Godefroy, Albert Besnard, Paris 1969
- Peter Parshall et al., The Darker Side of Light: Arts of Privacy: 1850-1900, Washington 2009
- Ad Stijnman, Engraving and Etching 1400-2000: A History of the Development of Manual Intaglio Printmaking Processes, Houten 2012