20. Auguste Lepère
(1849-1918)
Chiffonniers sous le Pont Marie (Rag Pickers Under the Pont Marie)

(click on image to print)
Lepère, Chiffonniers

Chiffonniers sous le Pont Marie (Rag Pickers Under the Pont Marie)

Lithograph, 1897, Lotz-Brissonneau 306, 180 x 293 mm. Fine impression on chine-volant with good margins, signed in pencil and from the only edition of 40 impressions; a few negligible printer’s creases, mostly in the margins, and two tiny edge tears. Lepère was intrigued by every aspect of Paris and the Parisians and one could probably assemble an exhaustive pictorial history of a couple of decades of Parisian life from his images alone. Rag pickers were a prevalent element of that life, gathering under whatever shelter was available to sort their goods. One should note the technique here. Although basically a crayon lithograph, Lepère has worked on the stone with a needle, creating white lines in the black areas to pick out detail or reflected light. It is a measure of his inventiveness that he never accepted a print-making technique simply as given, but invariably found ways to add to it.