Vue du Pont des Saints-Pères

Félix Henri Bracquemondwas 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 Pissaro 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 <em>Kacho-ga</em>, 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 Theoophile 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 is one of four etchings which Bracquemond exhibited in the fourth Impressionist exhibition of 1879. It is a highly atmospheric view of the Seine, Paris, in bad weather, seen from the Pont-Royal. with boats moored at right bank near trees, and a bridge, Notre-Dame and the Palais de Justice seen in distance to the left. These 'impressionist' etchings demonstrate a remarkable change in the artist's approach to landscape. Influenced by the modern subjects and atmospheric effects employed by the impressionists, Bracquemond's etchings are among the first to attempt to absorb their progressive concern for color and the ephemeral quality of light in a scene of contemporary life.

See:

http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/autumn15/denker-reviews-felix-bracquemond-impressionist-innovator

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

Dr Mark Stocker    Curator, Historical International Art    September 2017