Charles Émile Jacque (1813–94)

(upper image) “Marchand de Melons” [Melon Seller], 1844 printed by Auguste Delâtre (1822–1907)

Etching on cream chine-collé on thick wove white paper

Inscribed (within image, lower left) with the artist’s initials and date; numbered (below the borderline, lower left): “33” and lettered with production details

Traces of a publication address (Marchant's) and a printer's address (Delâtre's) alongside the bottom.

Size: (sheet) 18.9 x 22.6 cm; (plate) 11.1 x 14.4 cm; (chine-collé) 9.7 x 11.5 cm; (image borderline) 7.6 x 10.2 cm

Guiffrey 1866 299; IFF 114

The British Museum offers the following description of this print:

“Melon seller: a man sits in a corner, smoking a pipe; three melons on a shelf at left, a bowl and a pitcher underneath; a later impression, with production and publication detail burnished, of a plate executed in 1844”. Etching, with some roulette and some engraving, and some slight surface tone” (http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=3502478&partId=1&searchText=charles+jacque+smoking&page=1) Note that this impression is earlier than the one in the collection of the British Museum in which the lettered production details have been burnished (i.e. partly erased). The use of plate tone in the BM’s copy may have been designed to conceal a weak impression from a worn plate of the late editions. This impression has little or no plate tone and the impression is crisp and well-printed without significant plate tone.

Condition: superb impression in near pristine condition.

(lower image) “La Cruche Cassée” [The broken pitcher], 1844, printed by Auguste Delâtre (1822–1907)

Etching on cream chine-collé on thick wove white paper

Inscribed (within image, lower left) with the artist’s signature and date; numbered (below the borderline, lower left): “85”; lettered with production detail (below the image borderline, lower right): "Paris Imp. Aug. Delâtre rue de Bievre 9"

Size: (sheet) 26 x 20.8 cm; (plate) 21.8 x 15.8 cm; (chine-collé) 14 x 11.7 cm; (image borderline) 11 x 9.4 cm

Guiffrey 1866 27 (undescribed state); IFF 70

The British Museum offers the following description of this print:

“The broken pitcher: a peasant from Brittany sitting on a stool in a rustic interior gestures towards a broken pitcher which he holds in his left hand; with production detail. 1844”

(http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=3359455&partId=1&searchText=charles+jacque+broken&page=1)

Condition: superb impression in near pristine condition.

I am selling this rare and almost faultless pair of prints executed by one of the most important printmakers of 19th century France for AU$258 (currently US$191.91/EUR169.08/GBP127.54 at the time of posting these print) including postage and handling to anywhere in the world.

If you are interested in purchasing these original Jacque etchings, please contact me (oz_jim@printsandprinciples.com) and I will send you a PayPal invoice to make the payment easy.

Although Jacque’s later prints capture the immediate moment of the scenes that he portrays by his free handling of the etching needle, these two prints demonstrate his formal rendering skills designed to portray the featured subject matter in a mimetic way (i.e. Jacque chooses marks best suited to suggest the different textures of the portrayed subjects). For example, note how the marks and the gaps between them are all different in his representation of the materials of the figures’ clothes and how these marks are again very different to those representing the rough texture of the walls behind the figures.

Regarding this pair of etchings and their related subject of a man wearing a large brimmed hat, FL Leipnik in his very readable “History of French Etching from the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day (1924) offers the following insights about Jacque’s interests at the time when he executed these prints:

“He sketched various types such as street-hawkers, beggars and character-heads; and rustic scenes had an especially potent attraction for him. These little etchings, which show Jacque’s fondness for village life as it appeals to the imagination of the townsman, fill about 350 plates of the work he did between 1842 and 1848. All these plates show eagerness for pleasing effects, but the execution is still hampered by Jacque’s training as a map-engraver. Precision and the orderly arrangement of superfluous detail prevail over artistic feeling” (pp. 76–77).