33. Rodolphe Bresdin
(1825-1885)
La Sainte Famille à la Perche

(click on image to print)
Bresdin, La Sainte Famille

La Sainte Famille à la Perche

Etching and roulette, 1858, 67 x 124 mm., Van Gelder 91 ii/iii. Fine, black impression with the added roulette work but before the re-biting of the plate, on chine-appliqué with large margins. This small image, with its sacred subject and almost obsessively miniaturized detail, still carries the same sense of mystery that permeates Bresdin’s larger works and is so much a part of his appeal. Surely, a representation of the holy family, clearly on the Flight into Egypt, but seated among the reeds at the edge of a swamp, with an inexplicable dog and no donkey, and Joseph holding a long pole (perche), must elicit a question – like “why?” Were this a medieval work of art, one might search through legends to find an answer. But this is a work of the mid-nineteenth century and the answer, if there is one, is buried with the artist.