An artwork is like a piece of life and history frozen in time.

 

On a cold October morning 2019 at Portobello Road market I found an old and awesome engraving by Julien Dupré (1851-1910). The frame was in very poor condition, with a shattered glass. The later rain would presumably have ruined the paper. The artwork did not mention a title, just the author's name, signed on the plate, along with the date, 1889. However, it didn't take me long to guess that it was the Hay Wagons (or The Hayfield). It was an antique etching by master etcher Charles Toussaint after an oil painting (1889) by Julien Dupré. Charles Henri Toussaint (1849-1911) was a French painter, illustrator and etcher, he studied painting and etching in Paris, where he first exhibited his art at the Paris Salon in 1874. During the following years he received numerous awards, including medals from the Exposition Universalle in 1876, 1884, 1899 and 1900.

The image size of this etching is 23 x 13 inches, about 55 x 33 cm. An original image is included in the Illustrated Catalogue of the Annual Exhibition of Artworks from All Nations, Munich Crystal Palace, 1890.

    

A similar engraving, also based on a painting by Dupré, was published in La France Illustrée (No. 1022, June 30, 1894), which allows us to verify that Dupré painted variations of the same setting.

Julien Dupré is another artist deeply fascinated by the life of the peasantry, and who painted extensively in the rural areas of Normandy and Brittany. A very talented painter, Dupré has always been considered one of Jules Breton's closest followers. His academic training is still evident, influenced by artists such as Breton and Bouguereau, although with certain features from Impressionist painting.

Focused on the depiction of the French peasantry, Dupré painted scenes in the lush French countryside, mainly in the areas of Normandy and Brittany, where he masterfully portrayed both human and animal figures, with particular attention to the Breton peasant woman, whom he idealized as Herculean and elegant, endowed with a heroic aura. His active and vigorous scenes distinguish him from other artists of this French rural genre. 

 

Dupré first participated in the Salon de Paris in 1876, becoming a regular exhibitor and receiving several awards from the Salon. In 1889 he also received a gold medal at the Paris Fair, and three years later the Legion of Honour. His painting found great commercial success in the North American market, and his creations can be found today in many public collections in the United States.

 

Harvesters at auction.

 

Collecting small artworks and attempting to investigate their value leads you to explore the amazing world of auctions, an exciting pastime with many passionate followers in the UK. In the years I have lived in London I have attended some exhibitions and auctions of Impressionist and British art at Christie's St. James. Many people are unaware that they can access the exhibitions for free, and even most auctions. There one can delight in contemplating artworks that will never be able to be visited in a museum, since they will end up in private collections in distant countries. Western museums cannot compete with astronomical bids. Living a multi-million pound sale in the first person is a unique and fascinating experience, which leads you to understand a little more about the complex business of art. The commercial value of an artistic piece is fundamentally linked to the interest that the people who bid on it have, and not only to its artistic quality or its historical value. 

Conditioned by the economic context and by the financial crisis, the value of art is continuously debated. Today the Royal Academy is struggling with a controversial dilemma: to sell a masterpiece by the Renaissance painter Michelangelo, whose price at auction could reach 100 million pounds, or to lose 150 jobs. Obviously a tough decision, although in my view people should be above cultural and artistic heritage. After all, it is they who produce the art.

Regarding the harvesters' engraving, through the various auction houses that operate online I was able to verify that similar engravings had been auctioned on several dates and in different countries, reaching winning bids and prices of up to $600: 

 

-Burstow & Hewett, Battle, UK. 2008. Lot 280. Harvest Scene (1889), etching by Julien Dupré. 13" x 22.5".

-Charlton Hall. West Columbia, SC, USA. 2015. Lot 806. The Reapers, engraving by Julien Dupré. Est: $300 - $500.

-Albion Prints. Clowne, Chesterfield, UK. C1890. Lot 3222. Etching by Toussaint after Julien Dupré. Published 1870-1907 by Seeley & Co., London, for "The Portfolio. An Artistic Periodical (...)", one of the most important art periodicals during the etching revival, edited by Philip Gilbert Hamerton. Size: 14” x 10”, 36 x 25 cm.

-Candlewood Yankee Fine Art. USA. The Hayfield, etching by Charles H. Toussaint after oil by Jules Dupre’s (1889). Size: 9.5” x 5.5”. Plate signed. Price: $150.

-KCM Galleries. Cape Coral, USA. 2019. Lots 401 and 547. The Hayfield (1891), etching by Julien Dupré. Est: $400 - $600.

John Constable's influence.

 

Probably the most famous hay wagon in art history was the one painted by the English artist John Constable in 1821, which he later exhibited at the Salon de Paris in 1824, along with other rural scene pictures. It has been said that Constable exhibition caused a great sensation among the younger French artists, who decided to abandon academic formalism and started looking for inspiration directly in nature, making the landscape and nature the main subjects of their paintings, and not just as a mere background on historical, mythological or literary compositions. Some of those artists influenced by the work of the English painter were those who gathered around Barbizon. The Hay Wain by Constable is also one of the most iconic paintings in the history of British art.

 

At the time I was still enchanted by that Dupré’s engraving I had the opportunity to acquire online a small original watercolor on paper, almost a miniature, representing a harvest scene as well. It was a rural landscape surely painted in the 19th century, and in the manner of an artist called Eugène Ciceri (1813-1890). Its dimensions are 128 x 80 mm. 

The scene depicted here is the end of a harvest day in the fields. The working villagers return home before sunset, and we can see the cart with the crop in front of us, almost reaching the village. Despite the tiny size of this piece, the author delights in the tonal values of both sky and countryside, and in the light effects caused on the landscape just before dusk, when the light is lateral and low. Prior to the first third of the 19th century, it was a relatively common practice to sketch landscapes in the ‘plein air’, in order to produce the finished paintings in the studio. Here, the unsigned watercolour, together with its small size, would suggest that it was a draft, or a quick study of light. What seems unlikely is that it was by an amateur painter. An amateur painter usually focuses on the formal features of the scene, with tendency to render shades in a flat manner. It is very challenging for a less experienced artist to capture a luminous impression from a scene.

The selected palette combines the earthy tones of the land with the bluish hues on the shadows and the sky, exploring the chromatic and light relationships between the sky at sunset and the earth, with deep contrasts of light and shade, enhancing the figures of the peasants, the carriage and some remote buildings in the village. Traces of Barbizon's aesthetics can easily be found, along with the influence of impressionism. That fidelity to the optical and chromatic impressions given at nature in certain atmospheric and luminous conditions, in this case at sunset, and the contrasts in colour, with that warm light which, like the clouds, opposes the evening blue sky, lead us to affirm that colour and light are the main features in this artwork, above the drawing.

 

As industrialization and urbanization progressed, with farm labourers migrating to the cities, rural exodus began to depopulate certain regions. This kind of rural landscape offered the image of a preserved, pre-industrial France where a peaceful existence was still possible. That effect caused by the Industrial Revolution also happened in Britain, where the countryside was seen as the timeless essence of Old England. I mentioned earlier that the style of this watercolour reminds me that of Eugène Ciceri, an early 19th century French painter. Until the beginning of that century landscape art was not officially accepted by the Salon authorities as an independent artistic genre. With the invention of tin tubes more and more artists chose to go out into the open air to paint nature, on paper or on small format canvases. Some of those painters gathered themselves in groups. One of those groups was the so-called Barbizon School, around the forest of Fontainebleau and surroundings. Eugène Cicéri was among those painters. In Pigalle, a district of Paris, he met artists such as Jean-François Millet, Théodore Rousseau, Jules Dupré, Narcisse Virgilio Díaz de la Peña or Eugène Isabey, his uncle. Ciceri’s landscapes depicted a peaceful rural France with no sign of industrialisation. The present watercolour recalls one of those rural landscapes in Normandy by Ciceri, small size paintings where landscape and shimmering sky dominate, and where the human figure is present, linked to the earth and to nature. Ciceri's landscapes reveal all the concerns of those innovative artists: the preservation of rural France, the appreciation of work and the invasion of industrialisation in a once bucolic environment. Ciceri made his debut at the Salon in 1851, the same event at which Jean-François Millet exhibited his work The Sower. Ciceri died at the age of 77 in Marlotte, close to Fontainebleau.

 

Literature:

 

-Bouret, L’Ecole de Barbizon et le paysage français au XIXe siècle, Neuchâtel, Ides et Calendes, 1972, p. 13.

-Gérald Schurr ; Pierre Cabanne, Dictionnaire des Petits Maîtres de la peinture, 1820-1920, Paris, Les Editions de l’Amateur, 2008, p. 179.

 

This was not the last watercolour depicting rural scenes that crossed my path in Portobello Road market or in London charities, some of them very exciting and worthy, but they will have their own article in this space. For now, I will resume with the engravings. After this etching by Julien Dupré came others, purchased on the internet, some of which were of great interest, such as La Mare (1879), a strong water etching by Théophile Chauvel after a painting by Jules Louis Dupré (1811-1889). This etching was printed in Paris by François Liénard and published in L’Art in 1879. The dimensions for this artwork are 237 mm (height) x 267 mm (width).

I eventually discovered that the British Museum kept an identical etching among its collections (Museum registration number: 1880,0214.235), also published in the L'Art magazine. They purchased it from Seeley, Jackson & Halliday, 54 Fleet Street, London, in 1880. Bibliography: IFF 64 (Inventaire du Fonds Français), Bibliothèque Nationale, Département des Estampes,  Paris, 1930.

 

L'Art, revue hebdomadaire illustrée' was a French illustrated magazine founded in 1875 and disappeared in 1907. Devoted to the history of art, it was aimed to a rich and erudite audience, hence its high price, about 4 francs per issue, while a newspaper used to cost 5 cents on average. The magazine offered its subscribers editions of original engravings as a present, mainly etchings, printed on quality paper and in a larger format than usual. They were produced by famous etchers, such as Théophile Chauvel, who was the artistic director of the magazine since the death of its founder, Eugène Véron.

 

Théophile Chauvel (1831-1909) was a French painter, engraver, lithographer and photographer. He studied at the 'École impériale des beaux-arts', where he won the second Prize of Rome for historical landscape. He exhibited for the first time in the Salon de Paris in 1855, and kept on painting landscapes for many years, although he mainly focused on drypoint, lithography and etching, techniques with which he rendered landscapes of the Fontainebleau forest, as well as reproductions of artworks by master painters, mainly from the Barbizon School. Among them he personally met Jules Dupré, author of the original landscape reproduced in this engraving, and Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot. He was a member of the Société des aquafortistes, and later of the Société des aquafortistes français. For the L'Art magazine, of which he was director from 1889, he produced wonderful etchings after paintings by Théodore Rousseau, Jules Dupré, Narcisse Díaz de la Peña, Charles-François Daubigny and Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, in which it is easy to appreciate his mastery. He won medals at the Salon in 1870, 1873 and 1878, and was awarded the medal of honour at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1881, in the engraving section. He was named knight of the 'Légion d'honneur' in 1879. He was also awarded the Grand Prize of the Salon in 1889 and in 1900.

The artwork reproduced here by Chauvel corresponds to Vaches à la mare (Cows at the pond), by Jules Dupré, a small oil painting on panel. Influenced by the English painting of Constable, and also by the Dutch 17th century tradition, Jules Dupré's painting benefited from his encounter with artist Théodore Rousseau, with whom he learned to observe and appreciate nature with sincerity and depth. All these influences are visible in this artwork, the careful depiction of the sky, the light effects, the reflections of the clouds on the water, the cattle watering in the pond, the power of nature over the human being, with that huge and twisting tree in front of the shepherd's tiny figure in the distance, on the hillside.

Jules Dupré portrayed the forests around Paris and the landscapes of Normandy with great dramatic effect. He made his debut at the 1831 Paris Salon, and quickly gained national recognition. "His pictures were rural poems, instilling quiet, happy thoughts", said about him contemporary art critic Clarence Cook. Today his work can be admired in the world's leading art galleries, such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the National Gallery in London and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

 

The other engraving I bought was Paysage de Forêt (Forest Landscape), an antique engraving by Julien Tinayre after a painting by Camille Corot, and published in Le Magasin Pittoresque in 1898. Like Chauvel, Julien Tinayre (1859-1923) was a French painter, illustrator and engraver, perhaps better known for being Marcelle Tinayre's husband, a prolific French novelist educated in Bordeaux and Paris.

The author of the original painting, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875), is also one of the painters who frequently visited the forest of Fontainebleau, coinciding there with the landscape painters of the Barbizon School. Corot was trained as an artist in Paris, but during his education he also travelled to Italy, where he created a large number of landscapes. Throughout his artistic career, Corot kept travelling extensively, painting in the open air and then carefully finishing the paintings in his studio. His works stand out for their naturalism, although in the early years his painting still showed features of the academic tradition, especially in the works destined to the Paris Salon. In 1875 he won a gold medal at the Universal Exhibition. Corot's influence on Impressionism's first steps was crucial, and his painting was one of the clearest precedents of that artistic movement.

 

These all engravings and etchings after masterpieces by renowned painters, published in illustrated magazines, gave many novel artists the chance to access the artworks shown at international exhibitions, even if it was through printmaking by engravers and illustrators such as Chauvel or Tinayre. However, engraving was a profession increasingly threatened by photography, and by the end of the 19th century many of the paintings and artworks at the major international exhibitions were already being captured by the camera of professional photographers. In the next post I will talk about a couple of those photographs of paintings I found at Portobello Road market.

Years later, at a Spanish flea market, I found an interesting etching after an artwork by a British artist.

Interior Scene with Woman and Child (19th century), 

aquatint and watercolour on paper after an oil painting by James Clarke Waite.

Interior Scene with Woman and Child (19th century), aquatint and watercolour on paper after an oil painting by James Clarke Waite. The scene depicts a female figure with headdress at a kitchen table teaching her daughter. The clothing, the qualities and textures of the objects, rendered with great detail and finish, and the illumination of the scene through a window are outstanding. The engraving, most probably contemporary to Waite's oil painting, was executed in colour by making a monochromatic print (black) over hand-coloured watercolour wash, or perhaps, by printing a single plate with black ink, and then being hand-coloured with watercolour. The result is a delicate fine art etching reproducing a scene by James Waite, probably a limited edition print. The name of the etcher is illegible. The measurements of the image are 45 x 34.5 cm.

English artist James Clarke Waite (1832-1920) was born in Whitehaven, Cumberland. He trained as an artist at the Government School of Design in Newcastle upon Tyne, the Scottish Institute in Edinburgh, and the Royal Academy School in London. He also studied for a year in Paris. Like many other artists, he alternated his work as a painter with teaching. Between 1863 and 1885 he frequently exhibited his works at the Royal Academy and in other art galleries in London (Suffolk Street, British Institution, Old Watercolour Society, etc.), achieving great reputation as a genre painter, and in 1873 he was appointed member of the Royal Society of British Artists. After that first period in England, he moved to Australia in 1886, where he achieved great success as a portraitist. He was a member of the Australian Artists' Association and of the Society of Victorian Artists, with which he exhibited regularly, his paintings fetching high prices. He died at the age of 88 in Woollahra, Sydney. The National Gallery of Victoria holds Waite's work, as do other Australian art galleries.

Woman and child (detail).

As for the technique of this etching, the aquatint is a variant of etching technique used to produce areas of tone instead of lines. In addition to create a range of monochromatic values, aquatint was frequently used to produce coloured prints. The aquatint process involves spreading a powder or soft grain of resin on a traditionally copper plate.  One method consisted of a box of powder, which was deposited in an even layer on the plate, which was then exposed to an acid. The image on the plate was then produced in negative, and had to be inverted.