When I first wrote in 2006 about Frank Brangwyn, the superbly accomplished painter, muralist, watercolorist, illustrator and printmaker, there were only a few scattered resources on the web, and very little in the way of available books or other printed material.

Since then, more resources have become available on the web, and I’ve listed some of them below. Though no new books have become available there is a wonderful new portfolio of some of his best graphic work.

Auad Publishing, a small imprint that specializes in beautifully produced books of the work of classic illustrators and comics artists (see my post on Franklin Booth), has created a faithful reproduction of a 1935 portfolio of lithographs, Frank Brangwyn, R. A.: The Way of the Cross.

This is a lovingly produced set of 20 plates, printed in letterpress (rare these days except for high end art reproductions) on 11″x14″ 80lb textured stock, in a deluxe fourfold portfolio.

The beautiful production values are quickly overshadowed by the power of Brangwyn’s drawings; powerful both in the sense of the emotional drama of their depiction of the Stations of the Cross, an in Brangwyn’s masterful drawing style and striking compositions.

In his work as an illustrator, Brangwyn acquired a great sense of design, and his classical training gave him the solid, finely honed draftsmanship that is the foundation of his influential style, but it is his own emotional investment in the subject, and his remarkable mastery of chiaroscuro, that bring the drawings to life.

The portfolio has an essay by Dr. Libby Horner, who is probably the world’s foremost authority on Brangwyn and his work. Dr. Horner created the frankbrangwyn.org web site (which is not heavy on images, but has lots of useful information about the artist, including a list of books he illustrated and links to other Brangwyn resources).

In Brangwyn’s drawings you can see the influence of Rembrandt and other great printmakers, and the drama of his own style that so heavily influenced the great illustrator Dean Cornwell (also here) and many others.

There is a small preview of the Way of the Cross portfolio on the Auad Publishing site, from which I’ve borrowed the images above (click on the image in the page for a pop-up gallery).

The small images here and on the Auad website don’t do the portfolio justice, but those who are already aware of Brangwyn’s accomplishments will want to be aware that the portfolio is limited to 700 numbered copies.

Lorenz Stöer was a German printmaker and painter active in the late 16th Century. His wonderfully idiosyncratic visions of geometric forms in landscapes of imagined architecture have recently been brought to light for us by that master discoverer of the idiosyncratic and arcane, peacay, whose ever-fascinating blog BibliOdyssey is a treasure trove (and dangerously fascinating rabbit-hole) of the strange and wonderful. (See my previous posts on BibliOdyssey here and here.)

Stöer seems to be obscure except for a published folio of 11 woodcuts titled Geometria et Perspectiva, of which the image above is an example. But an unpublished portfolio of color drawings discovered at the Munich Library has in recent years been attributed to him.

Peacay has provided not only examples from both on the BibliOdyssey page, but a Flickr set which features the images in high resolution.

There is also a reproduction of the folio here, but peacay’s sets are much better quality. You may want to supplement your enjoyment of the woodcuts with some background about polyhedra here and here (for some reason, I just love this stuff).

Stöer’s fascination with geometric solids was apparently the inspiration for other artists, like the creator of the intricate marquetery on this Collector’s Cabinet from the same time.

I would also have to assume that his polyhedral fantasias, oddly arranged architectural facades and stacked stairways were a direct influence on the fantastic geometry and math inspired works of M.C. Escher.

Those in the art establishment who like to rewrite art history, or simply ignore it, in the defense of their position that illustration is somehow “not art”, conveniently ignore the number of well known artists who also happened to be illustrators.

A case in point is Winslow Homer, widely regarded to be one of the most prominent American artists and renowned as a master of watercolor, whose career as an illustrator is largely glossed over.

Homer worked for over two decades as an illustrator and visual journalist, reporting from the front lines of the Civil War and portraying more bucolic domestic scenes for popular periodicals like Harper’s Weekly.

His powerful and sensitive drawings, full of sunlight and shadow, emotion and atmosphere, were captured for print in astonishingly intricate wood engravings made by professional wood engravers (who are unsung artistic marvels to my mind), who reproduced the artist’s drawings with a beautiful range of tones made from delicate linework.

Wood engraving is a process that takes the age-old concept of woodcuts a step further, using harder wood and cutting into the end grain instead of the normal block surface. That and the use of tools initially developed for metal engraving, notably the burin, made for a super-fine line that gave an almost photographic appearance.

Homer’s wood-engraved illustrations are the focus of Winslow Homer: Illustrating America, an exhibition organized by the Brooklyn Museum (and taken largely from their collection) and currently showing at the Jersey City Museum in New Jersey.

The exhibition runs until December 23, 2009, and is accompanied by a complimentary exhibit called Hudson Views: A Celebration of the River that features wood engraved illustrations by other artists from similar periodicals.

There isn’t an online gallery for the exhibition, but you can view many of the illustrations in the Brooklyn Museum’s collection.

As these illustrations were mass produced, many are available from dealers in prints and etchings. I’ve listed a few other resources below.

Norwegian symbolist Edvard Munch is another of those artists, like Whistler or even Hokusai, whose oeuvre is condensed to a single image in the minds of most people, in this case his iconic image The Scream.

There are actually several versions of The Scream, including both paintings and prints, more than one of which have been the target of high-profile art thefts (later recovered).

The theme of suffering and mental anguish carried through much of Munch’s work, however.

His formative years were marked by a father who was fanatically religious and obsessed with sorrow and death. His Mother and beloved elder sister died of consumption, now known as tuberculosis, when Munch was five and fourteen, respectively; and one of his younger sisters developed a mental illness at an early age.

Munch himself was a sickly child, often in bed for long periods where he would draw to keep himself amused. In addition to religious subjects, his father schooled Munch and his remaining children in literature, including frequent readings of ghost stories and the work of Edgar Allen Poe.

Munch’s later life was torn by dramatically unhappy love affairs, alcoholism, associates with morbid philosophical influences and restless traveling.

The expressions of anxiety, unhappiness, fear and grief resonated with those who viewed his art, and he became a widely sought out and influential artist, beyond his native Norway and particularly in Germany, where he lived and worked for many years.

He was one of the founders of the Expressionist school, in which color, line and the delineation of recognizable objects are distorted at will for emotional effect; often, as in Munch’s case, centering on anxiety, fear, despair and spiritual angst. As in many expressionist works, the dark emotional tone is often belied by a palette of intense colors.

Not all of his works are as negatively charged or emotionally dark as his signature pieces, many are more straightforward and representational, and in his early years, even impressionistic.

There is a series of galleries on edvard-munch.com that gives a good overview, arranged by subject. edvardmunch.info has a list (no thumbnails, but links to images) arranged roughly chronologically.

In addition to his work as a painter, Munch was a printmaker and created etchings, wood engravings and lithographs. There is an exhibition of 40 prints that will be at the National Gallery of Scotland from 19 September to 6 December, 2009. The exhibit is from from the Munch Museum in Oslo, which is dedicated to his prints.

In his paintings, Munch was concerned with the effects of color, and the way one’s perception of a scene could change with time of day or emotional state; saying: “The fact is that at different times you see with different eyes. You see differently in the morning from in the evening. The way in which one sees also depends on one’s mood…”

For the benefit of those in other parts of the world, I’ll point out that today is Veterans Day here in the U.S., a day set aside to honor those who have given or risked their lives, endured hardships and put themselves in the service of their country in military service.

The same date, November 11, is also observed in many other countries as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day, a date taken from the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I.

Harold Kerr Eby, usually known as simply Kerr Eby, was an artist who made first hand observations of both World War I and World War II, the former as an artist/soldier, the latter as a civilian member of the combat art program sponsored by Abbott Laboratories (see my posts on They Drew Fire: Combat Artists of World War II and Art of War: Eyewitness U.S. Combat Art From the Revolution through the Twentieth Century).

You can see his impressions of World War I in the form of his dark and emotional etchings, done after the fact but carrying the weight of first hand observation. His World War II images (image above, top) were more direct, often done on the spot with charcoal, pencil and other dry media, with piercing observations of the horror, extremes and physical and emotional fatigue suffered by the soldiers.

Eby was born in Japan, where his father was as a missionary for the Canadian Methodist Church. He studied at Pratt Institute and the Art Students League in New York, at the later studying with George Bellows. He also frequented the Cos Cob artist colony in Connecticut and became friends with Childe Hassam, giving lessons in etching to the senior artist.

He enlisted in the Army and served as ambulance crew during World War I (known at the time as “the war to end all wars” because of its horrible scale; little did they know).

Eby was never officially commissioned to cover the war as an artist, but recorded many of his impressions on his own, later rendered into a series of lithographs that were published as a book.

At the entry of the U.S into World War II he attempted to enlist again, but was over the age limit. Instead he participated in the combat artist reportage program in the Pacific, landing with the Marines at Guadalcanal and Tarawa. He died of a disease contracted while covering the war.

In between the wars, Eby created a a body of work, apparently mostly in the form of etchings and lithographs. If he was a painter to any great extent, I’ve been unable to find any examples.

His etchings, though, are wonderful, with scenes from his trips abroad as well as domestic subjects, and to my eye showing the influence of etchers like James Whistler and Joseph Pennell. The best display of these is on the Old Print Shop site.

There is a long series of Eby’s drawings from WW II on the Navy Art Collection. (The server can be a bit slow, give it time, and note the links to multiple pages at the bottom.)

At times while looking through Eby’s WW II battlefield sketches, I found myself thinking about Gustav Dore’s illustrations for Dante’s Inferno, not from any stylistic similarities, but from the emotional weight of the images.

These are the hardships we’re called on to remember and honor on Veterans Day.

[Suggestion courtesy of Robert Tracy (see my post on Robert Tracy)]

The era around the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century was the high water mark for the art of poster design.

Technological innovations at the time allowed the use of mass-produced zinc plates instead of awkward and expensive lithographic stones to reproduce multiple images, and the artists could take advantage of multiple plates, each printing a different color ink and aligned in close registration, to produce beautifully colored images in quantities that made them suitable for distribution as posters.

This was also a landmark in that it began a social revolution that was at the heart of the Art Nouveau movement to produce egalitarian art, available to the masses and not just the monied elite (see my post on Alphonse Mucha).

Art posters are an almost forgotten art form, and represent a fascinating intersection of drawing, color and graphic design. The artists at the top of this form were those who excelled at all three skills, and the posters themselves are often astonishingly beautiful.

The university library of Lawrence University in Wisconsin, as part of their Digital Image Collections, has assembled an online collection of the Art of the Poster 1880-1918, an amazing treasure trove of beautiful Art Nouveau and other turn of the Twentieth Century posters.

The online collection at Lawrence is (at the moment) composed of 162 images and includes many famous, almost iconic images, including the poster for the first DADA exhibition, the original James Montgomery Flagg Uncle Sam “I Want You” Army recruiting poster, and Mucha’s poster for JOB Cigarette Papers that became famous and widely reproduced in the 1960′s.

There are posters for theatrical performances, expositions, burlesque, art exhibits, champagne, newspapers, magazines, cigarettes, safety matches, shoes, clothing, war bonds, books, cameras, typewriters, electric lamps, bicycles, biscuits and chocolate.

The artists and designers include Jules Cheret, Privat Livemont, Manuel Orazi, Maxfield Parrish, Louis John Rhead, Joseph Pennell, Will Bradley and many others.

But the star here is Alphonse Mucha, who was the master of this form; and is well represented in the collection, including many of the beautiful posters for Sarah Bernhardt that made his reputation as poster artist.

His poster for Princess Hyacinta is a stunning work, that will reward close study.

The library has chosen an image zooming feature with a somewhat awkward implementation, requiring page reloads, and apparently limited to a set grid of enlargement area choices instead of a continuous drag. A small quibble, though, in light of the wonderful collection of images they have prepared and made available online.

Once you select an image from the browsing thumbnails, you can click on an area of the image to enlarge that area, or modify enlargement levels and pan across the image with arrow controls at top left.

Clicking again on the enlarged image will take you in another level of magnification, until you reach 100%, which looks like it may be close to life size in some cases.

Best of all, however, is the easy-to-miss link at the top of the detail pages, just under “Art of the Poster”, for “export image” that allows you to download a full-resolution image (or smaller if you choose). It can take a while, even on a high-bandwidth connection, as the hi-res images are wonderfully large and can be 3 or 4mb in size. (If the display of the downloading image doesn’t appear right away, give it a few seconds.)

Time sink warning: If you like beautiful Art Nouveau posters, and there are some amazing ones in this collection, you could be here for hours, especially if you start downloading high-resolution images.

(Image above, clockwise from left: Alphonse Mucha, Louis John Rhead, Manuel Orazi, Maxfield Parrish)

[Link via Kattulus on MetaFilter]

The Blanton Museum of Art, part of the University of Texas at Austin, is currently showing Exquisite Visions of Japan, which is an exhibition of Japanese woodblock prints from the James A. Michener Collection of the Honolulu Academy of Arts.

Though the online image gallery on the museum’s site is minimal, it provides a nice jumping off point for revisiting some of the extraordinary Japanese woodblock print artists I’ve written about before, including Hiroshi Yoshida, Kawase Hasui, Katsushika Hokusai and Ito Shinsui; as well as looking for links for some artists I have not yet written about, like Utagawa Hiroshige, Hiratsuka Unichi, Okumura Masanobu, Katsukawa Shunsho and Kitagawa Utamaro.

Many of these artists are associated with the genre known as Ukiyo-e, or pictures of the “floating world”. (As I mentioned in my post on a recent exhibit of work from the Utagawa School at the Brooklyn Museum, the “floating world” is not what you might think on first hearing the term.) Others are associated with the “shin hanga” or “new print” movement.

These artists were tremendously influential on European artists in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, particularly the Impressionists and others like Whistler.

Unfortunately, my knowledge of the history and relationship of these artists and their times is frustratingly minimal. You will also have to forgive me if I am inconsistent in the order in which I use the artist’s family and given names, as this varies in listings and the naming conventions are unfamiliar enough that I’m never quite clear about which is which.

I do know that some of these works are among the most beautiful prints I’ve ever encountered. Particular favorites of mine are those of Hiroshi Yoshida and Kawase Hasui.

(Image above: Okumura Masanobu, Utagawa Hiroshige, Hiroshi Yoshida)

[Link via Art Knowledge News]

We tend to think of Japanese prints as depicting serene, contemplative scenes of mountains and gardens; and characterize them as the work of Zen-like removal from the bustle of everyday life.

On hearing that the term Ukiyo-e, the name for one of the most prominent genres of Japanese prints, refers to “pictures of the floating world”, we might assume, as I first did, that the intention is metaphysical.

In fact, the “floating world” is a term derived from a reference to a very much here-and-now (at the time) subculture that revolved around pleasure centers of major cities like Kyoto, Osaka and Edo (now Tokyo), in which food, drink, theatre, sex and other amusements offered their earthly allure.

Many of the prints that belong to that genre were of popular subjects like famous actors, sumo wrestlers, warriors, beautiful courtesans, interiors of theaters and scenes of frivolity and celebration like fireworks displays (image above: Fireworks at Ryogoku Bridge by Utagawa Toyokuni). These prints could be produced in great enough numbers that a wide audience, for whom original paintings were out of reach, could afford them. In effect, they were the visual pop culture of the time.

In fact, the government often cracked down on the artists for pandering to the public with base and popular subjects and tried to forbid the sale of pictures of famous actors, beautiful women and overtly erotic subject matter. It was later, perhaps because of the crackdowns, that many of the same artists moved into landscape for their primary subjects.

The Brooklyn Museum in New York has mounted a show of more than 70 prints, both from the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, and their own extensive collection of Japanese prints, called Utagawa: Masters of the Japanese Print, 1770-1900 that brings this character of the Ukiyo-e prints into high relief.

The Utagowa School, founded by Utagowa Toyoharu, was the major force in the Japanese print market in the 19th Century. It encompassed many of the of the finest artists working in woodblock prints at the time, including Utagawa Hiroshige (also known as Ando Hiroshige).

The Brooklyn Museum owns a complete set of Hirosage’s famous 100 Views of Edo, one of the most revered series of works in Japanese Art.

Utagawa: Masters of the Japanese Print, 1770-1900 is at the Brooklyn Museum from now through June 15, 2008.

If you happen to travel to brooklyn for the exhibit, don’t miss the fact that the Brooklyn Botanic Garden has a beautiful Japanese Hill and Pond Garden that should be showing signs of first blossoms about now; in which you can walk through the kind of serene and contemplative landscape we normally associate with Japanese prints.

For an experience more in keeping with the popular early prints of the Utagawa School, you might try Times Square.

Addendum: The Brooklyn Botanical Garden is offering a Utagwa woodprinting class inspired by the museum’s exhibit. From the Garden’s description of the class: “The Brooklyn Museum’s exhibit of Utagawa woodblock prints will inspire us to make wood and/or linoleum block prints of BBG sites. Two or three sets of numbered prints will be the class goal. Previous experience with linoleum and/or wood block printing is necessary. To register, call 718-623-7220. 6 Thursdays: May 1 to June 5 | 10:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m. $174 member, $189 nonmember (Fee includes $25 lab fee.)”