Antique Louis Monzies Mr & Mrs Edwin Edwards Colored Portrait Etching Print 23"

Description

Antique late 19th century hand colored etching of a Portrait of Mr and Mrs Edwin Edwards, engraved by Louis Monzies after a painting by Henri Fantin; taken from the 1883 portfolio "L'Art." Carved gilt wood frame with acanthus leaf corners and black painted bevel; no mat.

"Louis Monziès (1849-1930) began to learn painting and etching in Paris in 1871 from the painters Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier and Isidore Pils, and from the etcher Léon Gaucherel. He got second-class and third-class medals in 1876, 1880 and 1881 at the annual Salon in Paris. He married Eugénie Alphonsine Courtignon in 1882 at Cherbourg and three children were born : Jean in 1889, Pierre in 1891 and Jacques in 1895. He lived then in Paris but he owned also a small house in Normandy near Gréville-Hague. Louis Monziès carried out etchings for illustrated books and for Art publications, among them, those after Meissonier and Henri Pille. He became a member of the Société des artistes français in 1884 and also a member of the Société des Peintres-Graveurs français in 1891. He was quite popular in Parisian art salons with the Hédouins and in the literary gathering of the editor Lemerre who published famous living writers and poets with Louis' etchings. Louis Monziès visited London and was named to the Royal Society of Painters-Etchers in 1894 when he received orders for illustrations for English books and publications. His etchings are included in major collections such as The British Library or the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. But with photo-etching and other new publication processes, etchers were less and less able to make a good living from their skills. Louis Monziès move to Le Mans and became a painting teacher and a painting restoration specialist. He began to paint landscapes and urban environments in Normandy and in other towns like Venise or Avignon. He sold a lot of watercolors and oil paintings before the First World War. A few of these paintings were sent to the US by American officers housed by the painter at the end of the war. He became the curator of the Museums of Le Mans in March 1920 and stayed so until his death in 1930." (Source: Wikipedia)

"Henri Fantin-Latour (14 January 1836 – 25 August 1904) was a French painter and lithographer best known for his flower paintings and group portraits of Parisian artists and writers. Born in Grenoble, Isère, Ignace Henri Jean Théodore Fantin-Latour first had drawing lessons with his father Théodore Fantin-Latour (1805-1875), who was a painter. In 1850 he moved to Paris where he enrolled in the small Paris School of Drawing, where he studied with Louis-Alexandre Péron and Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran. He entered the École des Beaux-Arts, in Paris, in 1854, where he had for classmates, Edgar Degas, Alphonse Legros and Jean-Charles Cazin. Fantin-Latour would find recognition in England for his compositions of flowers and fruits, at a time when French Impressionist painting was still not very widely there. After his first Salon submissions were rejected in 1859, he began exhibiting with his friend Édouard Manet and the future Impressionists Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet. Fantin renovated the collective portraiture with paintings who served as large manifestos: Homage to Delacroix (1864), A Studio at Les Batignolles (1870), a tribute to Manet, The Corner of the Table (1872), a homage to the Parnassian poets, including Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, and Around the Piano (1885), a tribute to musicians and musicologists of his time. In addition to his realistic paintings, Fantin-Latour created imaginative lithographs inspired by the music of some of the great classical composers. In 1876, Fantin-Latour married a fellow painter, Victoria Dubourg, whom he met when both were copying the same painting at the Louvre. He would spend his summers on the country estate of his wife's family at Buré, Orne in Lower Normandy, where he died on 25 August 1904." (Source: Wikipedia)

Condition

Good Overall - Gentle wear; slight discoloration

Dimensions

18.5" x 1" x 22.5" / Sans Frame - 6.5" x 8.5" (Width x Depth x Height)