The Pre-Impressionists: Adolphe Appian

I intend this post to be first in a short series about the important fore-runners or precursors of Impressionism. Although the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874 is regarded as an earthquake moment in the history of art, there had been plenty of warning tremors in the years leading up to it. The roots of Impressionism lie most obviously in the plein-art painters and printmakers of the Barbizon School, and I shall in due course be looking at Barbizon artists such as Camille Corot, Charles-François Daubigny, Charles-Émile Jacque, Jean-François Millet, and Théodore Rousseau. The Barbizon artists were inspired by the example of the English painter John Constable, just as the Impressionists were inspired by J. M. W. Turner. There were also plenty of artists working outside Barbizon with similar aims of capturing fleeting sensations of light and shade and representing the landscape as our minds actually apprehend it. Most of these had some contact with the Barbizon group, and my first subject, Adolphe Appian, is a case in point.

Adolphe Appian, L'étang de Frignon à Creys

Etching, 1962

Curtis & Prouté 1 (II/III)

Adolphe Appian was born in Lyon in 1818; his birth name was Jacques Barthélémy or Barthélémi Appian, and he first exhibited under the pseudonym Adolphe at the Salon de Paris in 1835. He studied drawing at the École des Beaux-Arts de Lyon under Jean-Michel Grobon and Augustin Alexandre Thierrat. Appian was both a musician and a painter, and did not fully commit himself to the visual arts until 1852. This was the year Appian met Corot and Daubigny, both of whom profoundly influenced his style and approach; after this, while remaining based in Lyon, he made numerous trips to the forest of Fontainebleau to paint alongside the Barbizon artists. Michel Melot, in his exhibition catalogue for the centenary show of L'estampe impressioniste at the Bibliothèque Nationale in 1974, writes of Appian's wish to resolve the problems of changing light, and to render visual sensations (air, water, leaves) in etching. If you look closely at the kinds of marks Appian uses to describe skies, reflections, or seas, you will see that these are not conventional notations, but freely expressive responses, designed to evoke rather than delineate.

Adolphe Appian, Le champ de blé

Etching, 1863

Curtis & Prouté 2 (III/IV)

Although Appian remained a provincial artist, working almost always in the region of Lyon, he did make his mark on the art world, exhibiting at the Salon de Paris from 1835 and the Salon de Lyon from 1847 (and regularly at both Salons from 1855), contributing etchings to L'Artiste and the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, and most importantly publishing etchings with the firm of Cadart. Appian was a prominent member of the Société des Aquafortistes from its foundation by Cadart in 1862 until its dissolution in 1867, and remained loyal to Cadart and his widow Célonie-Sophie until the collapse of the business on 12 January 1882.

Adolphe Appian, À gorge de Loup

Etching, 1863

Curtis & Prouté 5

The 1878 Cadart catalogue advertises a Collection de 25 Eaux-Fortes (Paysages et Marines) by Adolphe Appian for the sum of 50 francs. This title, Landscapes and Seascapes, does convey in simple terms Appian's ostensible subject-matter. But the truth is that for Appian, as for the Impressionists, the true subject of art is the play of light. This is very evident in his etchings, and even more so in his monotypes. He made around 33 of these, some true monotypes (painted directly onto the plate and printed only once), others painted on top of an already-etched plate. Most of these monotypes, from the Atherton Curtis collection, are housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; Melot's catalogue reproduces the etching Un Rocher dans les communaux de Rix alongside the same plate printed "en manière de monotype". The fact that the monotype was printed on the first state of the etching proves that Appian was already experimenting with monotype by 1865, three years before Paul Huet explored this technique and ten years before Degas. Appian was probably encouraged in his trials of different ways and intensities of inking an etching plate by Auguste Delâtre, who printed Appian's etchings from 1863 to 1869.

Adolphe Appian, Flotille de barques marchandes (Monaco)

Etching, 1872

Curtis & Prouté 34 (II/II)

Adolphe Appian made his first etching in 1853. Between then and 1896 he produced some 90 etchings, 4 lithographs, and around 33 monotypes. This is quite a serious printmaking output for someone whose main work was as a painter, and this is reflected in the fact that nowadays Appian is much more fêted for his etchings than for his paintings. The paintings tackle the same subjects as his etchings, with a strong preference for "contre-jour" motifs; these extravagant contrasts of light and dark show the influence of another artist loosely affiliated to Barbizon, Appian's friend Félix Ziem. After he discovered the light of the Mediterranean, Appian's palette lightened and his style became looser and more impressionistic.

Adolphe Appian, Environs de Martigues (Bouches de Rhone)

Etching, 1874

Curtis & Prouté 39

Adolphe Appian, Barque de pecheurs
(Barques de cabotage, Côtes d'Italie)
Etching, 1874
Curtis & Prouté 40 (II/III)

There is a good further selection of etchings by Adolphe Appian at Old Master Prints. The standard reference work is Atherton Curtis and Paul Prouté, Adolphe Appian, son oeuvre gravé et lithographié (1968).

Is the book half-full, or half-empty?

Before I get too carried away with all my planned posts on aspects of the British between-the-wars wood engraving revival, here's a reminder of another "revival" - the French etching revival of the second half of the nineteenth century. This was in many ways the creation of a single man - not an artist, but a dealer and publisher. His name was Alfred Cadart. He was born in St Omer in 1828.

Alphonse Charles Masson (1814-1898)

Portrait of Alfred Cadart

Etching, 1874

In 1862 Cadart founded the Société des Aquafortistes, which lasted until 1867. In 1868 he founded the journal L'Illustration Nouvelle, and in 1870 he restarted his publishing house at 58, rue Neuve-des-Mathurins, publishing etchings at a furious rate until his premature death in 1875, after which his widow took over the business. All of Cadart's enterprises were undertaken in association with the master printer Auguste Delâtre.

Advert for Cadart's "petite presse"

Cadart didn't just organize everything and publish everyone. He sold all you needed to start etching, from a proofing press at 150 francs to "éclats du Levant" to sharpen your etching needle at 50 centimes. More than that, he offered free etching lessons, and set aside a studio for artists to bite their plates and make trial proofs. In 1866 he published Maxime Lalanne's Traité de la Gravure à l'Eau-forte, and in 1873 followed this with A.-P. Martial's Nouveau Traité de la Gravure a l'Eau-Forte pour les Peintres et les Dessinateurs, two detailed and lucid how-to guides.

François Nicolas Augustin Feyen-Perrin (1826-1888)

Cancalaise

Etching, 1874

I've just acquired a fascinating catalogue of Cadart's published etchings from 1868-1874: Catalogue Complet d'Eaux-fortes Originales et Inédites Composées et Gravées par les Artistes eux-mêmes. It begins by listing 247 etchings published in L'Illustration Nouvelle up to mid-way through 1874. Then 2 collections of L'Eau-Forte depuis douze ans, consisting of 100 plates each. Then an enormous list alphabetically by artist of all the Principales Publications de la Maison Cadart. Then all his special publications dealing with the Siege of Paris and the Commune. And finally the 30 plates from l'Album Cadart for 1874.

Adolphe Lalauze (1838-1906)

Female performer

Etching, 1874

Even this comprehensive list doesn't contain all Cadart's work - there's nothing beyond mid-1874, and nothing to do with the Société des Aquafortistes and the failed firm of Cadart et Luquet. And - weirdly - it contains no list of the 12 new etchings contained within the catalogue itself, just a list of the 11 artists responsible for them.

Alfred Taiée (1820-1880)

Aux Champs Elysées

Etching, 1874

The copy I have acquired of Cadart's catalogue contains just 7 of the promised "douze planches types divers", with the remaining 5 in photocopy. The copies (not reproduced in this post) are by Jules Jacques Veyrassat, Charles Beauverie, Maxime Lalanne, Adolphe Potemont Martial, and Adolphe Lalauze (who contributed two etchings). The remaining 7 are posted here. They are all printed on laid paper. The etching by Alfred Taiée, and the missing ones by Beauverie and Martial, credit Imp. A. Cadart as the printer, though I suspect this really means Delâtre, for Cadart.

Pierre Teysonnières (1838-1919)

Border of a river

Etching, 1874

I already have etchings by 5 of the artists, but am particularly thrilled to acquire a really stunning example of the work of the important precursor of the Impressionists, Adolphe Appian.

Adolphe Appian (1818-1898)

Fishing boats in a harbour

Etching, 1874

Alphonse Édouard Aufray de Roc'Bhian (1833-1886)

Fishermen on a riverbank

Etching, 1874

My other "new" artist is Aufray de Roc'Bhian; the work is unsigned, and it was only by the process of elimination that I managed to work out who it was by.

Two intriguing portfolios

I have two portfolios of prints, one issued in 1884, the other in 1888, both entitled, Vingt-cing eaux-fortes par les principaux artistes modernes. The publisher is A. Lévy at the Librairie Centrale des Beaux-Arts, 13 rue Lafayette, Paris.


The portfolios

Of course the idea of a portfolio of etchings by the principal modern artists working in Paris in the 1880s sends shivers of anticipation down the spine. But as we say in England nowadays, “Calm down, dear. It’s a commercial.” There’s nothing in either set by any of the names that would nowadays seem obvious. And the artists are by no means all French, for they include four Italians and two Spaniards.


Title page etching by Henry Somm

Still, they are fascinating collections. The first thing I realised about them is that many of the etchings date from the late 1860s/early 1870s (so even in 1884 weren’t as moderne as all that), and were originally published by Alfred Cadart. Cadart, who founded the Société des Acquafortistes (1862-1867) was one of the principal forces behind the French etching revival. Between 1870 and 1875 he commissioned and published a large number of etchings, using Auguste Delâtre as his printer. But Cadart died in 1875, aged only 47. From the evidence of my etchings, his widow continued his business for some time (at least until 1880, as her imprint is on an etching by Lhermitte from that year), but evidently by the 1880s the rights had evidently been sold on. In the captions below I will give dates for the etchings when I am sure of them, but there is still quite a bit of research to be done.


Edmond Morin, Averse sur le boulevard, 1876

Lévy was a bookseller and publisher with a strong interest in etching. In 1875 he published the catalogue raisonné of the etchings of Charles Daubigny; the following year he published a collection of etchings by members of the Barbizon School, under the title Le paysagiste aux champs. So he was exactly the kind of person to capitalize on Cadart’s back catalogue.

How many copies of the portfolios were issued is unknown, but they seem to be very rare. I can’t find any record of copies at the Bibliothèque Nationale (though I will admit I’ve never found the BN’s website very easy to use), or any others for sale. So I don’t know if 1884 was the first, or 1888 the last, or if any were issued in the years between.


Adolphe Lalauze, La balançoire

My view is that Lévy was simply offering his customers a kind of lucky-dip selection from Cadart’s back catalogue. The covers and title pages of the portfolios are identical (with an etching by Henry Somm), and both have exactly the same four-page introduction by Roger Marx. The introduction makes no mention of specific artists or prints, and there is no list of contents, so it seems that the purchaser simply got a blind selection of prints.


Antonio Casanova y Estorach, Andalouses, 1877

The two portfolios even overlap, with 9 prints in common; though oddly all the etchings in the 1884 version are printed on china paper pasted onto a wove backing sheet (chine collé), while all those in the 1888 edition are printed directly onto laid paper.


Louis Lemaire, Vase de fleurs

The 1884 portfolio is in much less good condition than the 1888 one, with quite a bit of foxing. Foxmarks are the yellow-to-rust spots that bloom on paper that has been kept in a damp atmosphere that allows mould to grow. Unfortunately they can’t really be removed. But it still has some interesting items, including two etchings by Paolo Michetti one of the foremost artists of the Scuola di Resina, the Italian Impressionists. They are two wonderful pieces, in which the central figures emerge mysteriously from a mass of hasty scribbles. To put this find in context, only one etching by Michetti has been offered at auction in the last twenty years, and that was in 1990.


Paolo Michetti, Cueillette d'olives dans les Abruzzes, 1875


Paolo Michetti, L'enfant au panier, 1878

The 1888 portfolio, apart from being in excellent condition, has another surprise up its sleeve. Instead of 25 etchings, it has 32, plus 8 duplicates. There are also two copies of the title page and the introduction, so maybe at one point there were 50 etchings in all. The treasures here are quite remarkable. There are two copies of Giuseppe de Nittis’s masterly essay in Japonisme, La danseuse Holoke-Go-Zen.


Giuseppe de Nittis, La danseuse Holoke-Go-Zen, 1873

There’s an original etching by Léon Lhermitte, an artist so admired by Vincent van Gogh that in one letter of 1885 Vincent mentions him no fewer that 8 times, ranking him among “the great”.


Léon Lhermitte, Épicerie de village, 1880

There’s an etching by the Barbizon artist Charles Daubigny, Le pré des graves à Villerville, Calvados.


Charles Daubigny, Le pré des graves à Villerville, 1875

There are three etchings by François Feyen-Perrin, one of the most popular artists of his day, famed for his depictions of Breton fisherfolk.


François Feyen-Perrin, Mélancolie, 1870


François Feyen-Perrin, Les filles du pêcheur


François Feyen-Perrin, Derrière un jardin à Veules-en-Caux, no later than 1875

There are three original etchings by Charles Chaplin, who taught Mary Cassatt, as well as an etching after Chaplin by Félix Bracquemond.


Charles Chaplin, Roses de mai, 1877


Charles Chaplin, Avant le bain, 1876


Charles Chaplin, Les colombes, 1864


Charles Chaplin, Les bulles de savon, 1867


Charles Chaplin, Le miroir (etched by Félix Bracquemond)

And there is a copy of Deux idiots mendiants by Alexandre Falguière one of only two original etchings produced by this important realist sculptor/painter; I already have two proofs of his other etching, Caïn et Abel, so I now have his complete catalogue of etchings. This is one of the few etchings I can date to the year of publication of the portfolio, as Falguière's painting Les nains mendiants, on which this etching is based, was exhibited at the Salon of 1888.

Note on the above, added 4 August 2009: I have been puzzling since writing this how the Falguière etching could possibly date as late as 1888, as it was printed by Veuve Cadart, and I am sure she had given up the business way before that date. The etching is signed, and I now realise also dated, in the plate - all in reverse. Looking at it in a mirror, the date is clearly 1876. So the etching came before the painting. As with Caïn et Abel, which received two quite separate printings, in 1876 in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts and in 1902 in the Revue de l'Art ancien et moderne (which mistakenly believed the etching to be previously unpublished), so Deux idiots mendiants was printed twice - in 1876 by the widow Cadart, and in 1888 by L'Artiste, in which the title is given as Nains mendiants - Grenade. The later printing is also distinguishable from the first because it was printed by Taneur, not Cadart. Why it took so long for Falguière to exhibit his painting of this scene, I don't know. But at least the story of Falguière as an etcher begins to make more sense. Both of his etchings date to the same year, 1876, and each exists in two separate editions. This also accords with my theory that Lévy's portfolios were simply a means of shifting Cadart's unsold stock, and apart from Somm's title page did not contain any new work.


Alexandre Falguière, Deux idiots mendiants, 1876

Enjoy the pictures, and for those interested, here is the complete list of works in the two portfolios. They include three completely anonymous works, with no etched signature or printed credit. I append photos of these at the end of this post, and if anyone has a clue as to the artists, I would be very grateful.


Alberto Pasini, Abbrutimento


Édouard Toudouze, Woman fishing


Jules Lefebvre, Rêve


Frédéric La Guillermie, Jeune Bretonne vannant du blé noir au bord de la mer, 1874


Edmond Hédouin, Interior with mother and child, 1876


Célestin Nanteuil, Jacintha, 1866

Vingt-cing eaux-fortes par les principaux artistes modernes, 1884:

Anonymous
Two women walking in a wood

Camille Bernier (1823-1902)
Une ferme en Bannalec (etched by Edmond Yon, 1836-1907)

John Lewis Brown (1829-1890)
Washington

Alfred Louis Brunet-Debaines (1845-1939)
La rue d’Orléans à Pont Audemer

Charles Chaplin (1825-1891)
Les bulles de savon
Les colombes

Alfred Alexandre Delauney (1830-1894)
Tour de la Giralda, à Séville

Edmond Hédouin (1820-1889)
Interior with mother and child
Croquis d’une figure

Frédéric Auguste La Guillermie (1841-?)
Jeune Bretonne vannant du blé noir au bord de la mer

Adolphe Lalauze (1836-1906)
Le guet-apens
La balançoire
Le malade imaginaire
Cancalaise
À sept ans

Louis Eugène Lambert (1825-1900)
Envoi (etched by Edmond Yon)

Jean-Paul Laurens (1828-1921)
François de Borgia devant le cerceuil d’Isabelle de Portugal (etched by Edmond Yon)

A. Lefort (dates unknown)
Girl knitting

Francesco Paolo Michetti (1851-1929)
Cueillette d’olives dans les Abruzzes
L’enfant au panier

Louis Monziés (1849-?)
Amateur de tableaux

Célestin François Nanteuil (1813-1873)
Jacintha

Alexandre Protais (1826-1890)
La garde du drapeau (etched by Edmond Yon)

Jules Jacques Veyrassat (1828-1893)
Intérieur d’écurie à Samois
Men with horses at a farmhouse

Vingt-cinq eaux-fortes par les principaux artistes modernes, 1888 (duplicates from 1884 marked with a star):

Anonymous
An art auction
Girl gathering flowers

Antonio Salvador Casanova y Estorach (1847-1896)
Andalouses

Charles Chaplin
Avant le bain (2 copies)
Les bulles de savon*
Roses de mai (2 copies)
Le miroir (etched by Félix Bracquemond, 1833-1914)

Charles-François Daubigny (1817-1878)
Le pré des graves à Villerville

Alfred Alexandre Delauney
Tour de la Giralda, à Séville*

Alexandre Falguière (1831-1900)
Deux idiots mendiants (Les nains mendiants)

François Nicolas Augustin Feyen-Perrin (1826-1888)
Derrière un jardin à Veules-en-Caux
Mélancolie
Les filles du pêcheur

Alberto Maso Gilli (1840-1894)
Una tentazione

Édmond Hédouin
Interior with mother and child (2 copies)*

Adolphe Lalauze
Le guet-apens (2 copies, one entitled À Les)*
Ah! Tout doux! Laissez-moi de grace, respirer (2 copies)
La balançoire*
Le malade imaginaire (2 copies)*
Hét Éves Vagyok (this is the same etching as À sept ans)*

Louis Eugène Lambert
Kedélyes Fészek (this is the same etching as Envoi)*

Jules Lefebvre (1836-1911)
Rêve

Louis Marie Lemaire (1824-1910)
Vase de fleurs (2 copies)

Léon Lhermitte (1844-1925)
Épicerie de village

Ricardo de Los Rios (1846-1929)
Incroyables

Edmond Morin (1824-1882)
Averse sur le boulevard

Giuseppe de Nittis (1846-1884)
La danseuse Holoke-Go-Zen (2 copies)

Alberto Pasini (1826-1899)
Abbrutimento

Alexandre Protais
La garde du drapeau (etched by Edmond Yon)*

Frédéric Regamey (1849-1925)
Coquelin – Rôle de Tabarin

Édouard Toudouze (1848-1907)
Woman fishing

Jules Jacques Veyrassat
Intérieure d’écurie à Samois*


Anonymous, Two women walking in a wood


Anonymous, An art auction


Anonymous, Girl gathering flowers