Henri Rivière, Wash-place in the Woods at Loguivy (Lavoir sous bois à Loguivy) from the series Paysages bretons, 1894

Colour Woodcut

The major exhibition of Japanese woodblock prints at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1890 was a revelation for countless modern artists. They absorbed the Japanese printmakers’ abstract visual language, the flat expanses, silhouettes, abrupt cropping and decorative patterns.

Above all, however, they were inspired by the power of colour, and more specifically the colour woodcut. Some artists — Henri Rivière and Henri Charles Guérard among them — were so impressed by this Japanese technique that they set out to imitate it as precisely as possible.

Jules Chadel, Harbour with Boats, 1930 — Jules Chadel, *Harbour with Boats*, 1930

The Japanese technique

The complex process for printing a Japanese woodblock print is clearly visible in a series of trial proofs by Jules Chadel. He was downright obsessed by Japanese prints, and even went to study under his Japanese counterpart Yoshijirō Urushibara (1888–1953), who taught him the finer points of the craft.

It was here that he learned how to print blocks inked in different colours on top of one another accurately, finishing with the key block containing the line drawing.

James Pitcairn-Knowles, The Bath (Le bain), 1896 — James Pitcairn-Knowles, *The Bath (Le bain)* and the trial proof of *The Bath (Le bain)* from the album *L'Album des peintres-graveurs*, 1896

Searching for nuance

The Scottish Nabi artist James Pitcairn-Knowles made a very subtle colour woodcut called The Bath (Le bain), in which he achieved a soft, almost watery effect by printing the key block in beige on greyish-blue paper.

We can see from an earlier trial proof that the use of a darker pigment for the key block produced a considerably harder result.

Colour Woodcut

The Japanese technique

Searching for nuance

Further reading