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Overview
Born in Valognes, Normandy in 1847, Buhot was orphaned at the age of seven. The library in his small town introduced him to art, and he spent hours poring over rare illustrated books and manuscripts. At the age of 18, Buhot moved to Paris to study painting and drawing at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. By his mid-twenties, he had learned the art of etching and soon became a successful printmaker. His depictions of Parisian life are atmospheric and enchanting, though precisely executed. Impressionistic details such as the blurring of carriage reflections on the wet road give the viewer the sense of peering into a memory. Buhot struggled with depression, and ultimately gave up printmaking shortly before his death at the age 50. However, his work is a testament to the power and popularity of his singular perspective.
Buhot was not often a 'one-state' etcher with a final ideal in mind for his prints, and instead enjoyed the challenge of achieving the maximum number of variations that could be drawn from a single plate. Changes from one state to another could be as simple as adding highlights in aquatint, to techniques that change the entire aesthetic of the image, say from day to night, or from calm to stormy weather. He would sometimes rub out sections and rework them; for example, the number of dogs varies in numerous versions of his famous L'hiver de 1879 à Paris, also in Te Papa's collection (1969-0002-12). Furthermore, he experimented with every part of the print: the tools, the mediums, the color and type of ink, the paper, even his signature and monograms, and perhaps most famously his 'symphonic margins', scenes along the sides that serve as comments on the main image (see again L'hiver à Paris). Buhot uses these margins to call attention to aspects of the story we might not know. These were sometimes sketched in the original plate, and sometimes added with a separate plate.
The result of this experimentation is that scholars are not always certain how many states there are of some prints, since besides published images there can be numerous versions that the artist produced in very small quantities, perhaps just for himself. The order of the prints can be almost impossible to determine, and later states are not necessarily better than earlier states; certainly Buhot himself did not think of them as necessarily improving, but simply changing.
Buhot's prints of the sea express the power and grandeur of nature as he focuses on ever-changing atmospheric effects, including wind, rain and storm-filled skies. This print is based on sketches Buhot made during his second trip to England when he landed at Ramsgate, north of Dover, on 9 September 1879, but the casual viewer could easily be forgiven for thinking this is a squally winter storm. The silhouetted and almost centrally placed dog is a characteristically witty touch. Here, Buhot has cut off the vividly illustrated margins, indicating that it is a fifth or later state of the etching.
See:
Art Museum of Arizona, 'Master Impressions from the UAMA Collections: Felix Hilaire Buhot', http://artmuseum.arizona.edu/events/event/master-impressions-from-the-uama-collections-felix-hilaire-buhot\
'Art of the Day', University of Iowa, https://uima.uiowa.edu/exhibitions/art-of-the-day/new-art-of-the-day-post-14/
National Gallery of Art, Washington, 'The Prints of Félix Buhot: Impressions of City and Sea', https://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/features/slideshows/the-prints-of-felix-buhot-impressions-of-city-and-sea.html
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art September 2017