33. Jacques Beltrand
(1874-1977) (sic)
La Tamise à Londres: Les Docks (The Thames at London: the Docks)

(click on image to print)
Beltrand, La Tamise à Londres

La Tamise à Londres: Les Docks (The Thames at London: the Docks)

Chiaroscuro woodcut plus etching 1936, Bibliothèque Nationale Inventaire 124. Very fine, fresh impression on wove paper with full margins, signed and dated and numbered in pencil by the artist from the edition of 40, and with a signed dedicatory note in the margin. The Beltrand who worked beside Lepère in the wood engraving studio was Tony, but Jacques, who was Tony’s son, became an intimate of the Lepère family, learned much from his great predecessor and helped to engrave some of his later work. This is very much a Lepère-influenced image and its facture too shows some of the mysterious blending of techniques in which Lepère sometimes indulged. The work is catalogued by the B.N. as a chiaroscuro woodcut, but the work in the sky seems to show that etching, or perhaps pen lithography, was employed somewhere in the process. A tone block is used to darken the image, very much like a tone stone in lithography. An attractive and intriguing print.