Laure Beaumont-Maillet

The French printmaker François Houtin (1950- ) is an artist whose work has been devoted almost exclusively to the depiction of imaginary gardens. At the outset of his career, Houtin worked as a gardener and floral designer, meanwhile training to become a landscape architect. Finding his horticultural visions at odds with real-world constraints, he sought alternative means of bringing them to life, and began studying etching and engraving at evening-classes.

Houtin’s first album of etchings was published in 1976, and numerous other publications and exhibitions have followed, culminating in this Catalogue Raisonné, which illustrates all of his three-hundred-and-odd prints as of 2002. He has been neatly characterised by his friend and collaborator Gilbert Lascault as ‘the printmaker-gardener, the draughtsman-nurseryman, the demanding dreamer, the landscape artist, and the arboriculturalist-etcher.’ The book (in French and English throughout), includes introductory texts by Laure Beaumont-Maillet and Paul Bédarida.… (mere)