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Charles Meryon

Frame for Portrait of Guéraud (with drawn portrait of Auguste Delâtre), 1862

Description

Maker

  • Unknown
  • Charles Meryon, 1821-1868, French

Title

Frame for Portrait of Guéraud (with drawn portrait of Auguste Delâtre)

Year

1862

Medium

Etching and drypoint on cream-colored, slightly textured laid paper

Materials/Techniques

Materials

  • chalk

Supports

  • paper

Dimensions

Image: 16.2 x 12.4 cm (6 3/8 x 4 7/8 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Inscribed in graphite below plate mark: "Monsieur Auguste Delatre, imprimeur en taille douce."

Type

  • Works on Paper,
  • Drawings and Watercolors

Credit

Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund

Object Number

66.121

Projects & Publications

Publications

Altered States

Etching in Late 19th-Century Paris
Read Online

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Altered States

June 30 - December 3, 2017

Although Meryon often worked on a minute scale, he found making the tiny portrait at right of the bookseller Guéraud especially challenging. Rather than etching on copper, he used a plate made of tin—a material that printmakers rarely used because it reacted unpredictably to acid. The plate was accidentally destroyed while the artist was still working on it, and after printing only a few trial proofs.

Now extremely rare, the print was intended to fit in the frame at left, designed with symbols celebrating the history of printing. Another artist later filled the image’s empty center space with a sketch of the printer Auguste Delâtre.

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is Frame for Portrait of Guéraud (with drawn portrait of Auguste Delâtre) with the accession number of 66.121. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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