Félix Bracquemond (1833-1914) France,
"Le vieux coq" or "The Old Cock"
Félix Bracquemond (1833 in Paris – 1914 in Sèvres) was a French impressionist painter and etcher.
He was trained in early youth as a trade lithographer, until Guichard, a pupil of Ingres, took him to his studio. His portrait of his grandmother, painted by him at the age of nineteen, attracted Theophile Gautier's attention at the Salon. He applied himself to engraving and etching about 1853, and played a leading and brilliant part in the revival of the etcher's art in France. Altogether he produced over eight hundred plates, comprising portraits, landscapes, scenes of contemporary life, and bird-studies, besides numerous interpretations of other artist's paintings, especially those of Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, Gustave Moreau and Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot. After having been attached to the Sèvres porcelain factory in 1870, he accepted a post as art manager of the Paris atelier of the firm of Haviland of Limoges. He was connected by a link of firm friendship with Édouard Manet, James McNeill Whistler, and all the other fighters in the impressionist cause, and received all the honors that await the successful artist in France, including an officer of the Legion of Honor in 1889.
Bracquemond was a prominent figure in artistic and literary circles in the second half of the 19th century. He was close to writers such as Edmond de Goncourt and critic Gustave Geffroy, and numbered among his friends Millet and Corot, Henri Fantin-Latour, Degas and the Impressionist circle, and Auguste Rodin. He was one of the more prolific printmakers of his time and he was awarded the grande medaille d'honneur at the Universal Exhibition of 1900. He was also a painter, ceramist, and an innovator in decorative arts. Gabriel Weisberg called him the "molder of artistic taste in his time".[1] Indeed it was he who recognised the beauty of the Hokusai woodcuts used as packing around a shipment of Japanese china, a discovery which helped change the look of late 19th century art. He married French Impressionist artist Marie Bracquemond in 1869.
According to Frank Weitenkampf, Chief of the Department of Prints, NY Public Liberty:
"Felix Braequemond is known particularly well as an etcher of birds. Yet he has done many things, more than one well enough to have established a reputation. At twenty he painted, and exhibited at the Salon of 1853, a portrait of himself, in a manner that carries you back to Holbein, that even faintly suggest the sprit of Van Eyck in its precise and detailed utterance. …But a still more famous plate, because most strongly characteristic, is The Old Cock (the original drawing for which is owned by Samuel P. Avery), a masterly portrait of chanticleer, in all the dignity and pomp of his mature viro and serene self-sufficiency."
Dorothy Woollard (1886-1986) British, "Bernham Beeches", edition of 60.
Dorothy Woollard was born and grew up in Clifton, Bristol, England. She enrolled at the Bristol School of Art around 1904. Under the leadership since 1895 of Reginald EJ Bush, this was becoming one of the best provincial art schools in the UK.
In 1913 she moved to London to begin her studies at the RCA's Etching School. From then until she retired to Cambridge in 1972, Dorothy lived in an apartment building in the fringes of Bloomsbury.
Dorothy Woollard's etchings caught the attention of Bristol-based print publishers Frost & Reed, and from 1913 onwards they marketed much of her work. The 1920 Frost & Reed sales catalogue, for example, contains no fewer than 40 of her etchings. One of the pages is shown left, courtesy of Frost & Reed. Between 1912 and the early 1930s Dorothy produced about 200 etchings, and a few woodcuts. The majority of her etchings depict urban and rural scenes in England and northern Europe. Her etchings of Bristol's medieval centre are highly regarded in their own right, and have also acquired added historical significance since many of the buildings were lost in the 1939 war. Dorothy was elected an Associate Member of the RE (today known as the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers) in 1916, and a Fellow in 1925. She received her ARCA Diploma from the RCA in 1924. In 1972, at the age of 86, Dorothy left London and moved to Cambridge at the urging of her old friend Barbara Miles, to live in sheltered accommodation. She celebrated her 100th birthday in February 1986, and passed away in October the same year.
Dorothy Woollard (1886-1986) UK, "Bernham Beeches"
Eileen Soper (1905-1990) UK, "The Scooter"
Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891) France, “The Game At Cards”
Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891) France, “The Game At Cards”, Engraver: L.J. Rajan,
Dimensions: Print 9 1/2" X 12 1/2" Image 7" X 5", Steel engraving from the Art Journal 1877.
MEISSONIER was born at Lyons, France, on February 21, 1815; but when he was still very young his parents removed to Paris, and it was there that he was brought up.
No work of Meissonier’s is better known than the beautiful and wonderfully drawn “Card Players”. A party of soldiers in one of their hours of ease has gathered in a richly furnished room of an old chateau, which they have either captured or in which for some other reason they feel at home, and are playing a game of cards. There are seven in all of them. The most distant one lies fast asleep on a settee. Near him another stands smoking his pipe philosophically, while a third leans upon his elbows against the back of a chair, like two others near him, watches the progress of the game. Very elaborate, costly, and picturesque are the costumes of these military revelers of the seventeenth century; and, if one were to compare the technical ability with which Meissonier has rendered them with that of similar renderings by the most conscientious of the old Dutch painters, a contrast would strike him between not only the literary interest of the two interpretations, but also between the charming grace of line, the ease of pose, the faithfulness of facial expression, and the general delightfulness of presentation of the modern painter, and the corresponding traits of his celebrated predecessors. This picture is skillfully rendered by the distinguished etcher, M. Rajan, and the original shows the fruit of so much genius and skill. It overflows with some of the finest technical and literary qualities of art in France.
Eileen Alice Soper RMS SWLA (1905-1990) UK
"Eileen Soper was born in Enfield, Middlesex and later moved to Welwyn, Hertfordshire with her family where she lived for the rest of her life. She was educated at home and was taught by her father George Soper who was an engraver, etcher and illustrator. She produced etchings as young girl (two were accepted by the Royal Academy when she was just 15 years old). Her work was exhibited widely and after the death of her father, Soper and her sister continued to maintain the Wildlife sanctuary he had created. Indeed, much of her subjects were drawn there and she produced several books on animals from the sanctuary, When Badgers Wake, 1955 and Muntjac, 1969 a study on the small Asian deer that lived there. Later in her career she produced numerous illustrations for magazines and illustrated over 35 Enid Blyton titles for children. Eileen Soper was a founder member of the SWLA, she was elected RMS in 1972." Her work continues to be highly desirable and collectible.
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