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Overview
Félix Henri Bracquemond (1833-1914) was a French painter and etcher. In etching and drypoint, he played a major part in encouraging artists such as Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro to use these techniques. He introduced Japonisme to the decorative arts of Europe.
He applied himself to engraving and etching about 1853, and altogether produced over 800 plates, comprising portraits, landscapes, scenes of contemporary life and bird-studies, besides numerous interpretations of other artists. This took the form of prints after paintings, especially those of Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, Gustave Moreau and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.
In 1856, Bracquemond discovered a collection of Manga engravings by Hokusai, typical of the pictorial genre known in Japan as Kacho-ga, depicting flowers and birds with insects, crustaceans and fishes, in the workshop of his printer Auguste Delâtre, after having been used to wrap a consignment of porcelain. He was seduced by this theme that made him the initiator of the vogue of Japonisme in France which seized the decorative arts during the second half of the 19th century
In 1874 Bracquemond participated in the first exhibition in the workshops of Nadar, in the Boulevard des Capucines, Paris, of the artists that would soon be called the Impressionists. He exhibited a portrait, and a frame of etchings including the portraits of Auguste Comte, Charles Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier but also etchings after Turner, Ingres, Manet and the original etchings Les Saules (The Willows) and Le Mur (The Wall). He exhibited again with his friends in 1879. The culmination of Bracquemond's career was his award of the Grand Prix de Gravure at the Exposition Universelle, Paris, in 1900.
This sensitively executed portrait is of Bracquemond's friend, contemporary and fellow etcher, Alphonse Legros, who revolutionised printmaking in England, where he settled permanently not long after it was executed. Legros was aged only 24 at the time, but had already made an impact in France with his realist painting and printmaking. It is the second of two states.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9lix_Bracquemond
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art September 2017