10. Paul Albert Besnard
(1849-1934)
La Mère Malade, ou le Déjeuner

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Besnard, La Mère Malade

La Mère Malade, ou le Déjeuner

Etching and drypoint, 1889, 200 x 298 mm., Coppier 75 only state, Delteil 90 v/vi ( ?). A fine, though slightly rough, impression, befitting a proof, on thick, slightly brownish laid paper with full margins, signed in pencil; a small foreign paper inclusion at the far right with associated stain. The state is really undetermined, but does not match Delteil’s final one. Done in Paris in 1889, the scene represents Mme. Besnard and her two children toward the time of birth of her third child. Besnard was commercially successful as a painter as well as receiving the full run of official rewards, certainly a result of his talents and capabilities, but also of his shrewd amalgam of classical techniques with impressionistic ones. In subject, he was drawn to faces and figures rather than landscape. His etchings, clear and direct, though sometimes, as here, quite painterly, embraced many thoroughly disquieting scenes (death, rape, starvation, addiction), but his representations of his family are all gentle affection.

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