Eugène Delâtre

Original Eugène Delâtre etching and aquatint.

Excellent signed proof impression with strong, unfaded colours. A particularly fine example of this large colour aquatint.

In his landscape works, Eugène Delâtre carried much of the spirit of the Barbizon School into the world of colour prints at the end of the nineteenth century. Son of the famous publisher and etcher Auguste Delâtre, Eugène Delâtre was to become one of the most skilled colour printmakers of his generation. His first colour-printed etchings and engravings date from 1890-91. Although influenced to some degree by the prevailing taste for Japonism, Eugene Delatre preferred the method of inking à la poupée, using only one printing of a single plate, to the Japanese method of multiple block printing.

As an early member of the Société de la Gravure Originale en Couleurs and later as a major publisher of original prints (after inheriting his father’s business in 1907), Eugène Delâtre exerted a considerable influence upon the development of original printmaking in France, even introducing Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and Mary Cassat to the art of burin engraving.

On cream laid paper, watermarked Arches, with full margins. Generally very good condition.