Le lac (The lake).

Félix Henri Bracquemond  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 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 original etchings: Les Saules (The Willows), 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 serene landscape, after an original painting by the famous Barbizon school realist Camille Corot (who is jointly credited), is of a lake, seen between trees. On the left, near the lake, there are a couple of cows, including one in the lake; a shepherd is standing at right. It was printed in Paris by Delâtre and was published in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1861.

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

Dr Mark Stocker    Curator, Historical International Art          September 2017