CHESS PLAYERS !! RARE Photogravure Antique Print

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Original Photogravurefrom 1891! --- another quality print from Martin2001 --- The Chessplayers Artist: F. Flameng Editor: Philip Gilbert Hamerton 100+ years old art print ... in excellent condition ... reverse side is blank ! Size: Size of the image: 6 1/4 x 7 1/2, overall print size incl. blank margins: 10 x 13 1/2 inches (1 inch = 2,54 cm). Condition: Excellent condition . Printed on heavier paper. Plate mark present. PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON (1834—1894) was an English artist and author. In 1866 he published his standard work on Etching and Etchers. He was also an art critic to the Saturday Review. In 1870 he established an art journal of his own, The Portfolio, a monthly periodical, each number of which consisted of a monograph upon some artist or a group of artists, frequently written and always edited by him. The monographs were accompanied by the original prints taken from the plates, prepared by eminent artists of the day for the purpose of being published in The Portfolio. Amongst the younger French artists of the present day, those in the prime of life and in the full energy of production, it would be difficult to mention one more completely representative than M. Francois Flameng. His interest in the past differs from that of the ordinary archaeologist or historian in its extreme vivacity. The past is always alive for him, and not only his favourite century, which seems to be the eighteenth, but other centuries also, whenever his attention is directed to them by the exigencies of the task before him. The word 'task,' in his case, appears to be almost inapplicable, as, although unsparing of labour, he finds everything a labour of love. A curious and fortunate peculiarity of his organization is that scale of execution is indifferent to him. He will turn from a tiny canvas, finished like a miniature, to a mural painting thirty feet long, without more embarrassment than Nature herself appears to feel when she builds the skeletons of a mouse and an elephant. Few artists have been so fortunate in their studies and in their gifts. The son of a distinguished engraver, who was nearer to painters than any other of his time, young Flameng lived from childhood in the world of art, and received nothing but encouragement and help. Having gained at the Lycee Louis de Grand, a sufficient scholastic training to place literary studies within his reach, he left before it had become too late to make himself an artist, and studied under Cabanel. After exhibiting a few early pictures, especially The Lectern, which immediately attracted attention, he became famous in 1879 with his Affel des Girondins. The scene is in the prison of the Conciergerie on the morning when they were called forth to execution, after passing the night t They had eaten their last meal together, encouraging each other, and talking of death and a future state. After the Affel they were taken together in carts to the scaffold, w their twenty-one heads were cut off in twenty-eight minutes. In the picture the meal is just over, and the emissary of the revolutionary tribunal is reading the warrant. The variety and intensity of expression in the faces and attitudes, the strength of individual character in all the figures, and the complete pictorial unity of the work, made it one of the most striking and most easily remembered pictures of modern times. It gained the 'Prix du Salon' and placed its author in the first rank amongst the younger artists. Instead, however, of settling down to repeat revolutionary subjects, he went to Italy to study the great masters, chiefly the Florentines, and since then has divided his time amongst works of the most various character, including great mural pictures, highly finished cabinet pictures, and everything between them. An indefatigable worker, Francois Flameng has avoided the danger of swift production by a constant attention to ev... read more

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