The etchings of Maurice Achener by Louis Seyden

In all epochs artists have seen to suddenly find themselves after having long and laboriously searched for their way. Such was not the case with Maurice Achener, however.
He had etched some twenty years and if he worked much, with the feelings always, sometimes a little uncertainly, from the very first his work has shown the impress of sincerity. One can go through it from the first to the last plate without finding the least suspicion of the deliberate use of any artifice. The desire to strike the imagination is totally foreign to him, and no etcher is less literary in the sense that is given to this qualification today. Let us understand by this that in a landscape whether in his native Alsace, in Italy, or in the Isle of France, disregarding theory and recollections, he has only he has only the desire to be an analyst of as great penetration as possible. Blank perhaps to the uncultivated or superficial observer, because often less pictures than their reflection his works enchants the delicate by shades of intense expression, by its refined sensitiveness which is left to ones divination.

One may well understand that’s Achener’s success under such conditions have been slow and progressive. He had from the first followers on whom the quality of his esprit and of is work was not lost. A circle of faithful collectors, growing larger every year, followed and encouraged him, classing him among contemporary etchers of solid reputation, and the future will certainly rank him among the masters.

Born in 1881 at Mulhouse, Achener studied at first in his own country, then at Munich. He destined himself to paintings, which he never gave up completely; his sending to the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts while not frequent have not passed unnoticed "sic". But soon, perhaps under the influence of one of his professors at Munich, P.Halm, himself etcher of repute, he began to feel the attraction of the point and the etching. But he did not give himself up to it definitely until after he had tried the wood block.
















About 1909, sollicited by an amateur, M Spetz to illustrate a collection of legendary poems, he acquired by himself the technique of the wood block, and even his first effort were successful. We may add in passing that he returned to the wood engraving in 1919, illustrating La princesse Maleine, of  Maurice Maeterlinck, and in1922 making the very important illustrations for La faute de l’abbé Mouret by Emile Zola.

But it is with the etching; that we are concerned here. His  first  plate date from 1902. The subject he chose from the country round around him, at Strasbourg and vicinity, attacking the most diverse themes, landscape, architecture, interiors. He even etched figure subjects a Dutch woman, a fisherman, some portraits. His character being (idealism and talent apart) laborious and conscientious, these first effort although scattered are yet not without value. The struggle of the artist with the technique of the medium which must to be learned is not too evident, and if the techniques hesitate at times, the vision is already personal. Before commencing to etch he had made   many designs and painting which one readily perceives even in his first efforts. When he started to works with the needle he had therefore long been in the possession of the requisite knowledge acquired as a painter, of what subject to choose and how to translate it. It is without doubt to this that these first are a quality often lacking in the early work, the result of experience, thought and happy simplifications…..

The print connoisseur July 1923 Edited and published by Winfred Porter Truesdell Champlain New York

The etchings of Maurice Achener by Louis Seyden

The olds buildings, the walls pitted by the weather and burned by the sun, the shadowed alleys, seemed to hold a particular appeal for Achener. He loved the harmony here, the discordance there; good portraitist of the towns, he penetrated their innermost secrets with a tender veneration. But nature also held for him its charms, and in particular the trees. Besides playing an expressive role in many of his plates, there are a certain number in which they furnish him with the sole motive. From his first essays in etching Achener saw the tree decoratively (see la Matinée de Printemps, Les Dunes près de Knocke). In Italy the mixture of the silvery trees with the sombre green of the Cypress rejoined the colourist in him, their silhouettes brought also to his compositions an clement of attraction which he used with originality. From this point of view le vivo Alto of Sienne is considered by many collectors to be one of his most personal plates.

In Switzerland the old and picturesque Fribourg, surrounded by precipitous gorges and dominated by the massive tower of its collegiate church, has furnished Achener the subject of six important plates : in default of a really  characteristics atmosphere the artist has called to his aid others factors  of emotion, violently contrasting lights and shades, profundity of perspective. However, in spite of the great picturesque interest and technique of these plates (of which the best seems to be la Vieille Ville) we prefer to the large view of Sion et la vallée du Rhône, and anove all the small and more recent views of Geneva and its environs, those of Collogny, or la Villa de Lord Byron, more varied in means and expressive of the utmost subtlety.  

 




































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