Eve Luquet was born in 1954, in Paris, France.
From 1977 to 1980, she attended the National School of Fine
Arts in Paris. While there, she discovered the art of engraving, and tried out
all different aspects of it. She took, for example, evening courses in wood
engraving, being taught by the stamp engraver Jacques Jubert, at the Ecole
Estienne. After a year, he looked at her work done so far, mainly to set out
her path for the next year. He was duly impressed, however, and asked her
whether she might be interested in engraving stamps, adding he would be happy
to teach her. So she spent the next half year working in his studio, being the
taught the art of steel engraving with the use of a microscopic magnifier.
A few years later, Jubert
contacted Luquet and asked whether she would like to submit her work to the
Service national des timbres-poste et de
la philatélie (SNTP), as they were looking for new engravers. The SNTP asked
her to submit a stamp essay which she did, engraved and all.
In 1986, Luquet engraved her first stamp: a single value
depicting St Vincent’s Cellar at Enclar, issued in Andorra. The following year,
her first French stamp appeared, which had the Treaty of Andelot as its theme.
After that, Luquet’s French stamps were almost exclusively
those for the annual Tourism series. She always visits the places she has to
depict, to get a feel of them, to see the sights in different ways, in morning,
afternoon or evening light. Back home she then first creates a ‘normal’ design,
before translating it into keyline art and subsequently an engraving.
With her main education having been artistic rather than focusing
on techniques, which is something Ecole Estienne students focus on, every stamp
engraving is always a challenge. Normally, Luquet has a rather bold engraving
style, with all lines clearly visible with the naked eye. But her stamp
depicting Dieppe, issued in 1999, was different in that she engraved it very
lightly, in order to capture the brightness of the place, the special light
shining on the sea.
The 1995 French stamp depicting Le Pont de Nyons, too, presented
quite a steep learning curve, with the French Post asking for various changes
late in the day. It left her feeling rather unsatisfied with the end result,
but ironically, it did win her her first Grand Prix de l’Art Philatélique.
In 1997, she became the first woman to design a French
Marianne stamp, though oddly enough, she would not proceed to engrave her own
stamp, instead letting this honour go to Claude Jumelet.
Luquet used to enjoy engraving for the philatelic documents
which accompanied many stamp issues. She relished the fact that she could work
on a slightly larger scale. For some of the documents, such as the 1992 Red
Cross Fund issue, she not only supplied the extra illustration, but also an
engraving of the stamp, which originally was printed in photogravure.
Half of Luquet’s time is usually taken up with her stamp
work, but the other half is spent on her private art, which also includes
engravings, though of a very different style. Her private art work is large,
dark, with only the whiteness of the paper creating any discernible light, and
bordering on the abstract.
Luquet is a member of Art du Timbre Gravé because she
fervently believes that the art of engraving is part of France’s cultural and
philatelic heritage and that they as artists have the duty to preserve and
promote it. So far, she has made two engravings for the organisation, in 2006
and 2017.