22. Henri Guérard
(1856-1897)
Marionette aux Lanternes Japonaises

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Guérard: Marionette

Marionette aux Lanternes Japonaises

Etching and aquatint, 1888, 208 x 143 mm., Bibliothèque National Inventaire 62B. Fine, sharp impression on laid paper with good margins. The work was designed as a frontispiece for Volume VII of Béraldi’s Graveurs du XIX Siècle, but it has nothing literally to do with that book. It is, rather, an example of Guérard’s fascination with Japonisme, that movement in France in the arts that came about as the result of the opening of Japan to the West in the early 1850s and the subsequent importation of Japanese art and curiosities into Paris. Guérard made many prints in Japonisme style, reflecting not only Japanese subject matter but also the compositional elements of Japanese graphic art.