Eugène DELÂTRE (1864 - 1938): Self-portrait - 1894

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Price: € 14 000

Etching, roulette and aquatint printed with colour registration, 290 x 233 mm. IFF 5/1, Cate and Grivel 60, Zmelty 24.

Very fine impression printed on wove paper, signed and numbered No. 25 in blue pencil. Bears Eugène Delâtre's red stamp (Lugt 742) in the bottom margin and the annotation in pencil Eugène Delâtre son portrait par lui-même in the lower left corner. Very rare: edition of 30 impressions.

Very good general condition. A few small creases and stains in the large margins (sheet: 362 x 523 mm). Tiny tear in the bottom margin and the tip of the upper left corner missing.

In 1894, Delâtre etched a portrait of his father Auguste examining an impression in his studio, in front of his large intaglio press.

‘Also in 1894, Eugène Delâtre etched his self-portrait in the family workshop, that of the artist and the printer: on one of the sheets of paper pinned to the right-hand wall are the names of three regulars of the place, Charles Maurin, Auguste Lepère and Charles-Louis Houdard. Stylistically, this portrait contrasts sharply with that of his father. Auguste's portrait, with its Japanese influence in terms of both the use of space and the formal and chromatic synthesis that characterises it, has nothing to do with this self-portrait, which emphasises detail as well as modelling, the result of patient work on shadows and gradations.’ (Nicholas-Henri Zmelty, Impressions à Montmartre, translated by us).

References: Hélène Koehl, Nicholas-Henri Zmelty: Impressions à Montmartre: Eugène Delâtre & Alfredo Müller, 2013; Phillip Dennis Cate and Marianne Grivel: De Pissarro à Picasso: l'eau-forte en couleurs en France, 1992.