Eaux-fortes par Bracquemond

Félix Bracquemond

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The etchers who produced albums with Cadart during the 1850s and 1860s favored simple designs for their title pages. For his first series, Bracquemond produced this print in which the required text is adorned only by the image of two ducks. The animals were, in fact, a trademark for Bracquemond—a favorite subject, they recurred throughout his work in the mid-nineteenth century (23.65.94; 22.69.25). The border of needlelike points that surrounds both them and the text may have been intended to evoke the instrument used to incise an image upon a wax-covered plate in etching. Printed on a deluxe, blue sheet, this impression was originally part of the collection of Alfred Beurdeley (1847–1919), a preeminent Parisian collector of original etchings.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art