“He does this so thoroughly that he can be dispensed with, the means of printing a photograph having been discovered. What imitates a photograph most completely if not a photogravure? This attains to a degree of impersonality so great that the poor engraver can no longer battle against it.
“For the engraver who possesses no faculty of composition to do artistic work it is necessary that he be an interpreter, a simplifier, with a very well-defined idea of the necessities of his craft, and that he know how to draw directly! He must renounce all attempts to overstep the boundaries of his craft; he must not try to express colors. One may, in an engraving, express cold and heat; that is, indeed, the main thing. But it is impossible to engrave red, yellow, or green. These are researches that encroach upon the domain of the painter and spoil everything.”
Of the original engraver more is exacted. As a true artist he must respect both his craft and the quality of his vision. He must synthetize, simplify, express, avoid photographic vision and trivialities of style; he must employ only the means forbidden to photography: those well-affirmed indications of the movements of the point which are the very foundation of the beautiful technique of engraving.
And in one phrase is summed up the essential aim of the engraver who treats his art with respect, whether he uses it for purposes of reproduction or for original work: “Not to imitate. To express.”
Lepère has followed his own doctrine to its logical conclusion. Never servile, even in his most faithful portraiture of a nature that enchants him, he works with a plenitude of science, but also with unwearied freshness of inspiration and a sympathetic feeling for the character of his subject, whether it is a curve of the river near Nôtre Dame where horses come down to drink, or a poor man’s hut with climbing vines in bloom, or the wide marshes of the Vendée. With the passage of time his vision has grown larger and calmer, his interpretations magisterial; but in his most classic moments he does not forget to infuse into his composition a strong feeling for this intimate characterization. He is a true creator, living not only above but in his conception. He is at once serene and moved, in command of his intellectual instrument and impelled by his personal interest.
The Journée d’Inventaire is a plate that shows clearly this double action of the artist’s mind. The composition is stately in both line and mass. In the background rises the lofty architecture of the Amiens Cathedral; in the foreground, in deep shadow, is a group of figures diversely occupied. The upraised arms of these figures lead naturally to the pointed arches and ascending spires. In a similar fashion, the strong darks of the foreground mount in diminishing quantity through the heavy shadows in the recesses of the doorways to the luminous blacks that mark the slender openings in the towers. It is a beautiful upward movement that repeats the song of the Gothic spirit.
These wonderful darks have also another function. Echoed as they are, in the small, sharp shadows of the multitudinous detail, they send the light quivering all through the picture. It pours down from a sky empty of clouds, and causes the web of decorative imagery with which the structure is draped to shimmer like a fabric set with precious stones. Only a true master of the subtleties possible to interwoven dark and light could thus command his atmospheric effect, and evoke from his slight and restricted materials the grandeur of the immense pile of stone raised by the hands of man, and the contrasting evanescence of the passing sunshine caressing every boss and hollow in the richly manipulated surfaces. It is perhaps not too much to say that nothing more remarkable in its kind has been done in the present century. The element of drama is added by the turmoil of little figures in shadow at the base of the cathedral, seen in minute detail through the translucent darkness and agitated by their human accidents and emotions. The whole spirit of France, its imperishable monuments, its sparkle of sunshine, its reasonable architecture, its vivid life, may be inferred from this remarkable plate.
Very different in sentiment and less close to perfection in the relation of the parts of the design to the whole, is La Chûte de Ballon; yet this also is a beautiful plate. As in the Journée d’Inventaire, the eye is led upward by the gestures of the crowd in the foreground to the point of interest, the balloon hung poised above the trees and houses. There is the same contrast of movement, too, in the agitated figures of the foreground with the calm lines and clear light of the distance. In this plate, however, is greater piquancy of light and shade. The abrupt lines and minor episodes are carried so far into the composition as to dominate the general impression, leaving the open distance to play a secondary instead of primary part. Figures are hurrying in excitement toward the scene of the aërial drama; tree branches are tossing, there are little restless clouds passing rapidly across the sky; the air is brisk, it is a bright day, there is much to see and do, and interest is keen—that is the story one carries away from the handsome, stirring print, and also a subtle poetic suggestion that beyond the town, as one follows the slow length of a white cliff, to where it meets the horizon, is a very great world that turns from night to day, from day to night, interminably, unchecked and unspeeded by the passing storms of human glee and human woe.
Lepère. Le Moulin des Chapelles