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Image

Félix Bracquemond

The Top of a Door (Le Haut d'un battant de porte)

Description

Maker

Félix Bracquemond (French, 1833-1914)
Auguste Delâtre (French, 1822 - 1907), publisher

Title

The Top of a Door (Le Haut d'un battant de porte)

Year

1852

Medium

  • Etching on cream-colored,
  • slightly textured laid paper

Materials/Techniques

Techniques

  • Etching on cream-colored,
  • slightly textured laid paper

Materials

etching

Supports

  • Thin laid paper

Dimensions

Sheet: 29.7 x 39.9 cm (11 11/16 x 15 11/16 inches) (trimmed to plate)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

In plate--signed LRC: Bracquemond/MV & fec/1852; inscribed bottom center: Le Haut d'un battant de porte.; LR: Imp. Delâtre rue de Bièvre 19 Paris

Marks: Watermark

Identification

State

ca. 30; iii/x

Credit / Object Number

Credit

Anonymous gift in memory of Patricia C.F. Mandel

Object Number

1998.14

Type

  • Prints

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Altered States
Etching in Late 19th-Century Paris
Jun 30, 2017 – Dec 03, 2017

Label copy

Bracquemond based this print on a scene he observed on a farm in the French village of Villers-Cotterêts. In an earlier state, carefully represented birds and a bat nailed to a barn door, capturing details such as feathers and the door’s wood grain with exacting accuracy.

In later states, Bracquemond added a moralizing tone through the addition of a small wooden plaque below the birds. It contained a verse that played upon the French word voler-meaning both “to fly” and “to steal”-suggesting that, like humans, birds must pay the price for taking what is not theirs.

Related Objects

Related Objects

Félix Bracquemond

The Top of a Door (Le Haut d'un battant de porte)

More objects +

Use & Feedback

Image 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 and available under a CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication

Tombstone

Félix Bracquemond (French, 1833-1914)
Auguste Delâtre (French, 1822 - 1907), publisher
The Top of a Door (Le Haut d'un battant de porte), 1852
Etching on cream-colored, slightly textured laid paper
Sheet: 29.7 x 39.9 cm (11 11/16 x 15 11/16 inches) (trimmed to plate)
Anonymous gift in memory of Patricia C.F. Mandel 1998.14

To request 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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