Silverpoint

Lineage of Corot · French · 1805 to 1887

Eugène Bléry

Meryon's teacher, who etched a burdock leaf and a forest floor with the same love.

Bléry taught Charles Meryon to etch, which would be reason enough, but his own plates are a quiet masterclass in botanical detail: foreground plants drawn leaf by leaf, forest interiors built from thousands of strokes, mountain streams with every stone. He worked in the Auvergne and the forest of Fontainebleau in the same years Corot and Rousseau did.

He is here for the foreground. Most beginners leave the near ground empty or scribbled; Bléry shows what happens when the nearest yard of a landscape is drawn as carefully as the far cathedral, and how that detail pushes everything else back into air.

The Two Oaks, Fontainebleau, Bléry, 1842
Art Institute of Chicago

Bléry, The Two Oaks, Fontainebleau, 1842. Etching, roulette, and drypoint on ivory wove chine collé on ivory wove paper.

The Art Institute of Chicago · Gift of David Becker

What to steal

  1. 1The foreground plant drawn fully; it is the measuring stick for everything behind it.
  2. 2Detail as a depth device: most in front, least behind.
  3. 3Patience with a single leaf.

How to look

  • Find the nearest plant and count its leaves. Then find the farthest tree and count its.

Studies 3 guided · 11 plate copies

All 14 →

Works

14 public-domain