UNIVERSITY PARK, PA.- This fall the Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State spotlights one of the most original French printmakers of the nineteenth century. Fantasy and Reality: The World According to Félix Buhot opened September 25 and will be accompanied by related gallery talks and programs throughout the fall.

“Felix Buhot’s achievement as a visionary artist-etcher is unprecedented,” stated museum director Erin M. Coe. “This exquisite and evocative exhibition provides visitors the space to study exceptional examples of Buhot’s experimental techniques and rich atmospheric effects for which he is best known.”

Félix Buhot (1847–1898) was a uniquely experimental printmaker in France during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This period was marked by a growing interest among artists in the evocation of thoughts and emotions, which competed in the art world with lingering realist tendencies. Buhot found comfort in both arenas, regularly decorating his naturalistic renderings of Paris and other scenic areas with morose and fantastical imagery. The borders of the print were of particular interest, where the artist extended his central theme with a series of anecdotal embellishments to create what he termed “symphonic margins”.

“Buhot was a master technician, an experimenter,” wrote James Goodfriend, guest curator for the exhibition and one of the world’s leading experts on the artist. “He was a pioneer in unconventional printmaking techniques that involved work not only on the plate itself, but also on the paper, the inks, and even the already printed, and supposedly finished, image. His graphic work stands as one of the treasures of nineteenth-century art.”

The exhibition features forty-six works including scenes of city life, country landscapes, and literary illustrations adorned with the artist’s unusual additions, all on loan from a private collection. It offers visitors the opportunity to experience a truly exceptional approach to printmaking and also includes several ethereal drawings and paintings by Buhot that are rarely placed on public view.

The exhibition is accompanied by a brochure with an essay by guest curator James Goodfriend, a worldwide authority on Buhot and the author of the revised and amended catalogue raisonné Félix Buhot: Catalogue descriptif de son oeuvre gravé by Gustave Bourcard. Together with his wife and partner, Carol, he has been a dealer and collector of fine prints and drawings for more than fifty years. Before that, he was a writer, music arranger, record producer, and music critic and editor.

Organized by the Palmer Museum of Art, Fantasy and Reality is on view through December 15.