International studio (23.1904)

Felix Bracquemond

of himself, engraved by Rajon. It was about
this date that Bracquemond took to engraving,
without the aid of a master, moved simply by the
force of his temperament and his instinct. His
first essay in this direction dates from 1849.
This plate, now exceedingly rare, represented a
female ass and her foal.
The rapidity of his evolution was marvellous, as
was the certainty with which he “found himself,”
without groping or hesitation. Three years of study
and work sufficed to give him a complete mastery
of the medium, and to enable him to produce the
Battant-de-porte, which remains one of his strongest
and most justly admired productions. At the same
time he returned to paint, and ten years passed,
during which he drove brush and graver in double
harness. Unfortunately his paintings of this period
are very rare, and as they are scattered about in
sundry collections I have not been fortunate enough
to see any of them.
In 1863 his Portrait of Erasmus was rejected at
the Salon, where two years later he won a medal
for his Portrait of Madame Paul Meurice, which
ranks, with his pastel portrait of Manet, among his
principal works. This last portrait, which reveals
Manet at about thirty years of age, with deep eyes

and delicate features, framed with a fair beard, has
undergone some strange vicissitudes. The painter
had, indeed, completely lost sight of it until a few
months since, when a friend—a collector—saw it
at a public sale, bought it, and presented it to
Bracquemond as a New Year’s gift.
Since that period Bracquemond has almost
entirely abandoned painting in favour of applied
art and ornamentation, while still practising etching
as before. For a long time he collaborated with
Deck, the worker in faience. In 1867 he designed
the decoration of a table service for Rousseau. His
practice was to cut out the subjects from his proofs,
and then group them on the various dishes. The
process of baking caused the paper to disappear,
leaving only the oulline, giving the form desired.
Dating from 1870, he was attached to the Sevres
manufactory, but this post he soon quitted to under-
take the artistic management of an atelier estab-
lished in Paris by the firm of Haviland, of Limoges.
But the great work of his life is' etching,
to which he later returned almost entirely.
Certain general classifications may be mad'e in
the 800 plates the master has signed. Throughout
the whole series of his works Bracquemond shows
himself, in the first place, an admirable translator


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BY FELIX BRACQUEMOND
97

LA TERRASSE DE LA VILLA BRANCAS