Les cigognes (The storks)

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 of impressionist painters in the workshops of Nadar, in the Boulevard des Capucines, Paris, of artists that would 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.

Les Cigognes (The storks) depicts three storks standing on a (probably Parisian) quay. The foreground stork, while ornithologically accurate, hints unmistakably at an anthropomorphic caricature. It is plate 271 in the fifth and final volume of prints, Eaux-Fortes Modernes, produced by the Société des Aquafortistes (Society of Etchers) in 1863-67. Five volumes and 300 plates all up were published; the collection marks the advent of the etching revival in France. Other contributors to the series include notable artists also acquired by Ilott and represented in Te Papa's collection, including Corot, Daubigny, Henri Fantin-Latour, Edouard Manet, Charles Meryon and Alphonse Legros.

See:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9lix_Bracquemond

Dr Mark Stocker    Curator, Historical International Art    September 2017