Rodolphe Bresdin was a French draughtsman and engraver, born in Le Fresne-sur-Loire on 12 August 1822, who died in Sèvres on 11 January 1885.
His fantastic works, full of strange details, particularly attracted Charles Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Robert de Montesquiou and André Breton. Odilon Redon was his pupil. Bresdin influenced contemporary artists like Jacques Moreau, George Rubel, Jean-Pierre Velly, and Philippe Mohlitz. Bresdin's life story and his art are both extraordinary and fascinating. He was one of the finest and most original exponents of the art of print-making in the nineteenth century and his name ranks alongside those of Whistler, Doré and Meryon in achievement and influence.
Huysmans described in his beautifully written, arresting novel, 'Against Nature' how his aesthete hero, Des Esseintes, 'in search of the rarest perfumes of visual splendours', has just savoured the prints of Jan Luyken, 'an old Dutch engraver almost unknown in France':
"In the adjoining room, the vestibule, a larger apartment panelled with cedar wood the colour of a cigar box, were ranged in rows other engravings and drawings equally extraordinary.