Marché aux légumes à Amiens (Vegetable market at Amiens).

Auguste Lepère (1849-1918), the French printmaker, painter, illustrator, ceramist and teacher, was the son of a sculptor. He was apprenticed at the age of thirteen to the English wood engraver Joseph Burn Smeeton who had established his studio in Paris. Lepère desired foremost to be a painter and submitted his paintings to the annual Salons but he worked for 30 years as an illustrator, earning his livelihood producing wood-engraving illustrations for L'Art, Le Monde illustré, La Revue illustrée and L'Illustration. Technology ended his first career in about 1890 as books and magazines adopted the use of the photographic image.

Lepère continued working in wood engraving, however, and between 1889 and 1901, his favorite subjects were the urban scenes around contemporary Paris - the bridges, churches and boulevards. He produced his first color woodcut, Marchands au panier sous une porte rue Mauconseil, in 1889.

It was a natural progression from magazine illustration to book illustration and in this new career Lepère found success as a master of the medium. Besides wood, he also worked with metal for his etching and limestone for his lithographs. His output was prodigious, producing around 1000 wood engravings and over 100 etchings.

In this etching, Lepère juxtaposes the everyday and the sublime. The three foreground punts are being steered towards the bridge on the right. Two figures are steering in the foremost punt. In the middle ground, there is a group of old buildings, with trees clustered on the left. In the slightly misty background conveyed by far lighter lines, Amiens Cathedral rises up dramatically.  The market of the title appears to be taking place on or by the bridge.

See: Annex Galleries, 'Auguste Louis Lepère', https://www.annexgalleries.com/artists/biography/1381/Lepere/Auguste

Dr Mark Stocker    Curator, Historical International Art   May 2018