Lineage of Forrest · French · 1827 to 1886

Maxime Lalanne

The man who wrote the book on etching, and drew Bordeaux and Paris as if the line were charcoal.

Lalanne's Traité de la gravure à l'eau-forte (1866) was the manual every etcher of the revival read, Haden and Whistler included, and his own plates of demolitions in Paris, the quays of Bordeaux and the Rhine towns are models of how to draw a city: a firm eye level, buildings built from a few planes, and tone from parallel lines that thicken toward the shadows. He also drew in charcoal with a softness that made him famous, and the two habits inform each other.

For a beginner he is the bridge between the Line and Mass halves of this program: his etchings are line that behaves like tone, and his charcoals are tone that keeps the structure of line.

Cleveland Museum of Art

Lalanne, A Street in Rouen, 1884. etching on chine collé.

The Cleveland Museum of Art · Gift of John Bonebrake

What to steal

1Tone from parallel line, thickening into the shadow and opening into the light.
2A city block as three planes and a roof, with the detail hung on afterwards.
3The sky as a few horizontal strokes, or nothing.