Etienne's Fishermen - 3

Etienne - Fisherman's Prize Catch

In this image by Etienne, the clumsy amateur angler of Part 1 and the admiring bystander in Part 2 are replaced by a man in a (wet?) pouch explicitly portrayed as 'The Catch'. He's hung up to await his fate, like the fishes in the background. Except that they are tiddlers and he certainly isn't!  The hooks that caught them lie on the ground.

It's normally angling practice to weigh prize specimens, to make a photographic record of  them and then throw them back into the water. That seems to be the procedure being followed here, but one can't help thinking that this big fish is in danger of being stuffed and mounted or even being eaten before the day is out, figuratively speaking of course.

 This comic image is one of Etienne's great might-have-beens in technical terms. The faces and physiques of the two men are beautifully drawn (particularly the catch) and the subject matter makes a fascinating bridge between the predatory nature of angling with it's dangerous impedimenta of hooks and knives and the world of captivity and domination that is S&M. Unfortunately all the beautiful detailing of this idea has been undermined by miscalculations, crazy perspectives and imbalances. These flaws which suggest to me that the artist got too involved with the eroticism of his subject and was distracted from the basics until it was too late.

Felix Falkon - Fisherman's Scuba Diver Catch

Felix Falkon was a contemporary of Etienne and once criticised him (in a friendly way) as 'lazy' but he imitated his style and recast a number of his compositions in a 'corrected' form. This may be an example of that. The two figures here do indeed look more 'correct' and yet it's not as sexy, despite the explicit details. 

The line drawing technique itself is intrinsically less sensual. There may be a colourised version of this image but Falkon lacked Etienne's mastery of shading technique, which was the equal of Tom of Finland's style. In Falkon's composition, the direct physical connection between the two figures has been sacrificed in favour of a more realistic suspension arrangement and there's less sense of lurking lust between them. Indeed the added scuba detail obscures some of the attractions of the catch. Etienne, the master of feet depiction, would probably mock Falkon's flippers as a cover-up job. Replacing the waders with boots makes a stronger S&M connection but loses an important element of the fishing theme. 

Etienne - Suspended in Jock

Compare Falkon's effort with Etienne's original suspension image and you understand the gulf in talent between them. It encompasses not only shading technique but more subtle elements like the cast of the two men's faces which successfully connects them in this version to establish a genuine sense of domination and mentoring even. Etienne's men both have a masculinity that is pretty much erased in Falkon's copied version.

Interestingly the sub's face here bears a resemblance to the that of the amateur angler pinned to a tree in Part 1 of this series, although his mentor is not the same. Etienne 'recycled' elements of his imagery sometimes and it's possible that an angling variant of this picture formed part of that set and led more directly to Falkon's imitation.

Read this series from Part 1

See the list of works by Etienne posted at mitchmen