木寺版画工房

16/08/2026

ドレの木口木版による挿絵-ロンドン巡礼の旅
19世紀のロンドンの風俗を緻密描かれています。
ハーフトーンで明るい部分は彫り方もだけど　版木を少し削って厚みを薄くしたりしてある。この技法をやるには平圧プレスで刷らないといけない。

By the early 1870s Doré's engravings for editions of the Bible, Cervantes' "Don Quixote," Milton's "Paradise Lost," and a host of other classics had established him as the foremost illustrator of his day. In the final decade of his life he would follow that success up with some of his best work. In our previous MWW Doré galleries we have already presented his illustrations for Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and Poe's "The Raven," and our next (and final) Doré gallery will include those for the 1873 edition of Rabelais' "Gargantua and Pantagruel." Here, we present a selection of almost 230 engravings from three lesser-known works -- a pioneering work of social commentary (the 1872 "London: A Pilgrimage"), an historical work (Michaud's 1875 "Histoire des Croisades") and a classic of Italian literature (Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso").

"London: a Pilgrimage" was a collaboration between Doré and his friend, the journalist Blanchard Jerrold, The project was initially conceived as a 'Pilgrimage through the Great World of London', starting with the pilgrims' arrival in England, but the book evolved into representative scenes of 'the extremes of London life'. The pair spent many days and nights exploring the capital, often protected by plain-clothes policemen. They visited night refuges, cheap lodging houses and the o***m den described by Charles Dickens in the sinister opening chapter of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood"; they traveled up and down the river and attended fashionable events at Lambeth Palace, the boat race and the Derby. The ambitious project, which took four years to complete, was eventually published as "London: a Pilgrimage" in 1872 with 180 engravings. Now seen as a classic work, Doré's atmospheric depictions of the London poor are regularly used as illustrations of London life. We present most of the full page engravings in this gallery, as well as a selection of the smaller vignettes, all accompanied by background on the scene depicted.

Long regarded as the standard history of the subject, François Michaud's "History of the Crusades," published in 1877, recorded over four centuries of passionate, bloody wars that brought the countries -— and cultures —- of Asia and Europe into conflict with one another. To illustrate Michaud's classic study, Gustave Doré executed 100 striking plates, capturing all the savagery, nobility, and vast sweep of the centuries-long conflict. Masterly in their combination of power, vivid detail, and striking visual effects, the plates are perhaps the finest pictorial recreation of the immense clash of cultures and religions underlying the great historical drama of the Crusades. Seventy-nine (79) Doré illustrations from this volume are included in this gallery, each accompanied by descriptive captions and the historical background of the event depicted.'

Ludovico Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso" ("The Frenzy of Orlando," more literally "Raging Roland") is a classic early 16th c. Italian epic poem. The story takes place against the background of the war between Charlemagne's Christian paladins and the Saracen army that has invaded Europe and is attempting to overthrow the Christian empire. Though the poem is about war and love and the romantic ideal of chivalry, its mixture of realism and fantasy, humor and tragedy was ideal for Doré's romantic style of illustration. In all, Doré provided hundreds of illustrations for Hachette's 1877, sixty of which we have included in this gallery.

For more Doré illustrations and paintings, see these MWW galleries:
* Doré Illustrations I: Coleridge, Cervantes, Poe
* Doré Illustrations II: The Bible
* Doré Illustrations III: Dante and Milton
* Doré Illustrations V: Rabelais, Perrault, La Fontaine & Tennyson
* French Painting 1850-1900: Doré, Orientalism & the Academy

15/08/2026

ドレの挿絵　神曲(ダンテ)

Out of his facility for grotesque humor and gaslight melodrama, Gustave Doré (1832–1883) invented some 10,000 illustrations for books and magazines that were duplicated for simultaneous publications in Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, Saint Petersburg, Stockholm, London, and Haarlem. With illustrated editions of the Bible, Coleridge's's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," Cervantes' "Don Quixote," Poe's "The Raven," and a host of other classics popular at mid-century, he was the reigning master of the coffee-table book. In 1866 he received a commission from the London publishing firm of Cassell & Company to illustrate new editions of two epic poems that were the foundational works of their respective national literatures.

Gustave Doré's illustrations and Dante's "Divine Comedy" have become so intimately connected that even today the artist's rendering of the poet's text still determines our vision of the Commedia. Planned by Doré as early as 1855, the Dante illustrations were the first in a series he referred to as the "chefs-d'oeuvre de la littérature." This gallery presents all 135 Doré illustrations for the Dante classic, each accompanied by a short synopsis of the scene depicted, followed by the translated text from the 1866 edition which appeared alongside it.

Doré's Romantic style of illustration, supremely imaginative and richly detailed, was ideally suited to literary subjects. His wood-engraved illustrations for John Milton's monumental epic poem "Paradise Lost," recounting mankind's fall from the grace of God through the work of Satan, were among his finest and most dramatic works. This gallery presents all 50 plates drawn by Doré and engraved in his studios for the original edition of "Paradise Lost." The dreamlike, otherworldly quality Doré often brought to his work seems especially appropriate for "Paradise Lost" with its lofty spirit and epic events. Indeed, Doré's grand conception seems to realize perfectly Milton's own poetic version. Each of the images that follow in this gallery gives the caption that was printed below the illustration in the original edition, as well as a short synopsis of the scene depicted.

For more Doré illustrations and paintings, see these MWW galleries:
* Doré Illustrations I: Coleridge, Cervantes, Poe
* Doré Illustrations II: The Bible
* Doré Illustrations IV: Tennyson, Rabelais & Others (in preparation)
* French Painting 1850-1900: Doré, Orientalism & the Academy

12/08/2026

ドレの木口木版画挿絵
この時代の挿絵は　日本の浮世絵同様に画家と彫り師と印刷所の三者の共同作業でした。

Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the foremost and most prolific illustrator in the nineteenth century's Golden Age of Book Illustration, and one of the greatest draughtsmen ever. This first of several MWW galleries devoted to him presents all his illustrations for three classic works of literature: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," Miguel Cervantes' "Don Quixote," and Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven."

For those wishing to revisit or experience for the first time the literary works themselves while viewing the images, the corresponding text of both the Coleridge and Poe poems is provided in the commentary section. (You may have to click "See More" to access all of it.) For the Quixote illustrations either the corresponding text (in an English translation) or a plot summary of the relevant chapter is provided.

Other MWW Doré galleries present his illustrations for Dante's "Divina Commedia," the Bible, Milton's "Paradise Lost," works by Shakespeare, Rabelais, Tennyson and others.

04/07/2026

今日からです
季節柄明月院の紫陽花も見頃です
是非おいでください

04/07/2026

ポール　デルボーの画集を拾いました。
好きな作家ですが最近あまりみません

Every great art movement seems destined to degenerate into kitsch. The virile art of the Italian Renaissance devolves into the sappy sentimentalism of the Counter-Reformation; the revelation of natural beauty by the German Romantics becomes the raw material for the "wholesome" pablum dished out by N**i artists; the epic grandeur and psychological depth of a Tolstoy novel paves the way for the cardboard characters and adolescent fantasies of an Ayn Rand. What's left of the surrealist endeavor today -- its reveling in the incongruous and unexpected -- is dished out every fifteen minutes to a seemingly brain-dead public by the self-proclaimed "geniuses" of Madison Avenue. There was a time way back when, however, when Surrealism was a serious artistic and intellectual enterprise and this MWW exhibit, the fifth and last in a series, devotes itself to one of its best, but least known, practitioners, the Belgian Paul Delvaux (1897-1994), whose work remains mostly in private galleries or in the small out-of-way museum that once was his home.

The French novelist and Nobel laureate Claude Simon once characterized a painting as "a fellow who talks about what can enter a man only through his eyes." That probably fits Delvaux as well as anyone. Though he too, like Magritte, served up tantalizingly teasing titles which promise but never deliver intellectual insights, the main impact of his work lies in its adept deployment of a limited number of iconographic elements to create "real-unreal effects" through the stark juxtaposition of opposites in the kind of serene yet expectant settings pioneered by De Chirico -- animated skeletons alongside sensuous female nudes, bustling and busy by day train stations transmuted into solitary dreamscapes by night.

This collection of over 240 Delvaux paintings presents the works in chronological order, in order to better appreciate the artist's development. As is MWW custom, many of the entries in this gallery include commentary (in English) from authoritative sources, which you can read if you click on "See More" under the picture's identifying information (artist, title, medium, dimensions, location) to the right of the full-screen image.

See also the other MWW galleries in the Surrealists series:
* The Surrealists I: Max Ernst & Co. -- Brave New Worlds
* The Surrealists II: Joan Miró & the Charm of Abstraction
* The Surrealists III: Salvador Dalí - The Artist as Showman
* The Surrealists IV: René Magritte - La Tentation de l'Impossible

06/05/2026

木口木版画-キク-
少し手が慣れてきて早くなってきた

02/05/2026

先ごろから彫っていた木口木版画刷り上がった

21/04/2026

木口木版の使用済版木を引退した木口木版作家にいただいたの磨き直して　彫りました。
その方は「鑿の会」で日和崎尊夫などと一緒に活動していました。只近年目がついていかなくなり制作が覚束無くなったととの事で
私も身につまされるので　日々を大切にして制作していきます

09/02/2026

木口木版用の柘植の版木　磨けた

20/01/2026

木口木版画-浮遊-
Wood engraving -Floating-