Eugène DELATRE: Portrait of Auguste Delâtre - 1894

SOLD

Etching printed in colors au repérage, 292 x 230 mm. IFF 5, Cate, Koehl, Zmelty 23.

Very fine impression printed on wove paper, signed, numbered n°70 and dedicated in blue pencil A M. Valère Bernard bien amicalement [To M. Valère Bernard, with kind regards]. Red stamp of Eugène Delâtre with his Japanese-inspired monogram.

Slight staining of the paper, a backed tear in the upper margin. Some stains in the bottom corner. Generally in good condition.

This beautiful portrait of printer and engraver Auguste Delâtre as he examines a print in his workshop is a homage from Eugène Delâtre to his father, who was then 72 years old. The intaglio printing press is a character in its own right on this plate, and it stands in front of a wall covered in framed prints, among which Nicholas-Henri Zmelty recognised a Paris landscape by Auguste Delâtre, taken from the heights of Montmartre, the neighbourhood to which the famous printer and engraver felt a strong connection all his life. In the same year, Eugène Delâtre also engraved his own self-portrait, in a similar pose, in the family workshop where he succeeded his father.

Reference: Ph. D. Cate, H. Koehl and N.-H. Zmelty, Impressions à Montmartre, Eugène Delâtre & Alfredo Müller, Silvana Editoriale, 2013.