Albert Besnard’s etching & drypoint, “Marché aux Chevaux (Environs d'Alger)”, 1895

Albert Besnard (aka Paul Albert Besnard) (1849–1934)

“Marché aux Chevaux (Environs d'Alger)” (aka “Horse market around Algiers”; “Marché aux chevaux en Algérie”), 1895, after Albert Besnard's painting exhibited in Le Salon du Champ-de-Mars, printed by A Clément (fl. c1887–1892) and published in Paris in 1895 on page 108 in the periodical, “Gazette des Beaux-Arts”.

Etching and drypoint with pale plate tone, printed on cream laid paper (with partial watermark) trimmed with small margins and backed with a support sheet.

Size: (sheet) 17.7 x 27.2 cm; (plate [soft]) 16.4 x 23 cm; (image borderline) 14 x 21 cm.

Monogrammed on plate within the image borderline: (upper left) “AB”.

Lettered on plate below the image borderline: (left) “P. A. Besnard pinx./ Gazette des Beaux-Arts”; (centre) “MARCHÉ AUX CHEVAUX (ENVIRONS D'ALGER)/ Eau-forte de l'Artiste.”; (right) “Salon du Champ de Mars/ Imp. A. Clement_Paris”.

State i (of i)

Coppier 97 (André-Charles Coppier 1920, “Les eaux-fortes de Besnard”, Paris, Berger-Levrault, p. 73, cat. no. 97).

André-Charles Coppier (1920) offers the following description of this print:

(Transl.) “It is a variation of the famous painting. In the foreground, five Arabian horses are guarded, in the shade, by a groom; two appear in profile and back in the slenderness of their forms and under the shimmer of their silky dress; the three others, turned towards the spectator, are touched by pawing their feet, while horsemen, noble and proud in their light burnous, pass in the sun, at the dancing step of their steed. Only one state, published in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, T. II, page 108 (1895).” (p. 73; see https://archive.org/details/leseauxfortesdeb00copp/page/72/mode/2up).

See also the descriptions of this print offered by The Cleveland Museum of Art and the INHA digital collections library: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1925.22; https://bibliotheque-numerique.inha.fr/idurl/1/16350.

Condition: a richly inked impression showing no sign of wear to the printing plate and laid onto a support of archival (millennium quality) washi paper. The sheet is in an excellent condition with no tears, holes, folds, abrasions, significant stains or foxing.

I am selling this marvellous etching (with drypoint) capturing in its seemingly hastily laid strokes the billowing dust and agitation of horses in a marketplace, for AU$248 (currently US$193.07/EUR158.96/GBP136.91 at the time of posting this print) including Express Mail (EMS) postage and handling to anywhere in the world (but not, of course, any import duties/taxes imposed by some countries).

If you are interested in purchasing this impressionistic rendering of light filtering through rising clouds of dust and the blurred movement of a moment, please contact me (oz_jim@printsandprinciples.com) and I will send you a PayPal invoice to make the payment easy.

This print has been sold