A painter-printmaker, Hallez’s interest in etching was initiated at the age of nine, by a book about Jacques Callot, the 17th century Lorraine etcher. And at the age of fourteen, Hallez decided to be an artist. In 1939 he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Nancy. His maternal grandfather, Emile Gridel, had been a painter and he grew up familiar with his paintings at home. As a student during the War, Hallez’s earliest prints were lithographs, because copper was difficult to find. His first etchings date from 1942 and at that period he printed his plates at the Art School in Nancy, acquiring his own press in 1948/49, from the estate of the etcher Victor Guillaume, who had been a member of the Jeune école Lorraine group. Hallez particularly enjoyed the physical effort of working into copper or wood (he disliked lithography as too closely related to drawing on paper), and the effects obtainable through aquatint.

This print laid down and front mounted.