THE

MAXIME LALANNE

PAINTER-ETCHER

HE first exhibition of Lalanne's etchings took place in Paris in 1874. The second, in the same year, at Bordeaux (where the artist was born in 1827). The third was at Marseilles in 1875; and a very full exhibition of etchings and drawings was in preparation for London in 1886, but the project was frustrated by the artist's death in that year.

The proofs which Lalanne himself had selected for exhibition in London were purchased from his widow and were exhibited in New York in 1889.

Lalanne's etchings are numbered according to Beraldi's catalogue, which is identical with Lalanne's own numbering of his works. His arrangement is sometimes a little arbitrary as to their chronological sequence, and he also saw fit to omit and disown a few plates which did not satisfy him; but we follow a safe guide in following the artist himself.

Maxime Lalanne's influence on landscape etching has been very great and also very salutary. His strongest influence on his contemporaries arose from his habitual use of the "frank, open line" at a time when other etchers (and among them Charles Jacque and Samuel Palmer) were

RUE DES MARMOUSETS

Size of the original print, 94 by 6 inches.

From the etching by Maxime Lalanne. This is one of Lalanne's strongest etchings. The spirit of the place is seized at once, and presented in a masterly manner. The drawing of the houses, as they incline backward, could hardly be bettered. It was the Paris custom, three or four centuries ago, when building the front of a city house, to make it slope backward.

VUE PRISE DU PONT SAINT-MICHEL (LE PONT NEUF ET LE LOUVRE)

Size of the original print, 73 by 11 inches.

From the etchings by Maxime Lalanne. In these two plates the gradation of tone, from the rich blacks in the foreground to the delicate grey of the distance, is beautifully rendered, and is done in pure line.

still hampered with reminiscences of the laborious methods of the line engravers.

His treatise on Etching, published in 1866, still maintains its position as the standard textbook for the etcher. It was translated into English by Mr. S. R. Koehler of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and published by Estes and Lauriat of Boston.

Another valuable book by Lalanne is his work on Charcoal Drawing. He was himself the most eminent artist of his time in this species of work, and he also maintained a distinguished rank as a painter in oils.

Our space cannot admit the long list of medals and other distinctions which he has won. They include a title of nobility from the late King of Portugal (who was himself a good etcher), also a medal for both painting and etching from the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, and finally the decoration of the Legion of Honor.

All of his distinctions are detailed in the official Archives de la Légion d'Honneur, where they

can be seen.

But it is through his etchings that Maxime Lalanne's name is likely to live. There is in them a grace and elegance that no other artist has achieved. His drawing is always correct and true, and he had no sympathy with the ugly and the repulsive - even though it was sometimes practised by such masters as Legros, Bracquemond, and Rembrandt himself. Lalanne confined himself within the safe limits of the "frank,

open line," and his work remains admirable so far as it goes. He did not enliven it with more or less successful experiments and innovations. He was not a chercheur like Félix Buhot or Henri Guérard. But Alexander Pope was a famous poet, although he refrained from such wild flights as were afterwards taken by Shelley, or Browning, or Walt Whitman!

It is a common thing, but most unfair, to condemn a work of art for the lack of those features or qualities which the artist had never intended to put into it; and if we take Lalanne within his own limits, we will find his work thoroughly good and right.