The Charcoal Burners
published 1908
Medium
Wood engraving in black on cream laid Japanese paper
Dimensions
Image: 7.8 × 16.1 cm (3 1/8 × 6 3/8 in.); Sheet: 17.9 × 23.9 cm (7 1/16 × 9 7/16 in.)
Classification
wood engraving
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
124992
Art Historical Context
**The Charcoal Burners** is a striking wood engraving by French artist Louis Auguste Lepère, in 1908. Lepère (1849–1918), a master of the medium during the Belle Époque, captured everyday rural life with this intimate scene of laborers tending charcoal kilns. Printed in bold black ink on luxurious cream laid Japanese paper—a nod to the era's fascination with Japanese ukiyo-e prints—the measures a compact 7.8 × 16.1 cm, perfect for intimate study or portfolio inclusion. Wood engraving, Lepère's specialty, involved incising fine lines directly into the end-grain of boxwood blocks, allowing for ...
About the Artist
Louis Auguste Lepère · 1849–1918
Louis-Auguste Lepère (1849–1918) was born in Paris on November 30 to the sculptor François Lepère, immersing him early in the artistic world. At age thirteen, he apprenticed in the studio of the English wood engraver Joseph Burn-Smeeton, training there from 1862 to 1867, and later attended drawing courses under Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran at the Petite École (now École nationale supérieure des art...