with this exception, that he cuts his own blocks. His first original wood engraving appeared in Le Monde Illustré in 1879. His series of wood engravings of the towns of France which were produced in 1889 in L'Illustration are masterpieces. Together with a band of artists, he started a journal L'Image, which largely consisted of wood engraving. The "Paris Pittoresque" series in this is remarkable. He combines the modern realism of Steinlen with the picturesque qualities of Méryon. He is equally powerful as an etcher and as a lithographer as he is on the wood block. His work is held in high esteem by lovers of what is best in modern French black and white art.
In dealing with the crowded period of English draughtsmen for the wood block in the sixties the want of space precluded the mention of contemporary schools of design and wood engraving on the Continent. The French have been particularly happy in their application of wood engraving to illustrating popular volumes. When Sir John Gilbert was nineteen years of age an edition of "Gil Blas" was published in London with hundreds of wood engravings after Jean Gigoux, who disputes with Adolf Menzel, the German, the honour of being the father of modern illustration. In this "Gil Blas" a great number of engravers were employed—H. Lavoignat, Godard, Sears, Benworth, Maurisset, J. Thompson, Cherrier, Breviere, Andrew, Best, Leloir, Chevauchet, and R. Hart, all of whose signatures appear. In a fine illustrated edition of "Molière," published in 1845, with a preface by Sainte Beuve, there are many hundreds of
