24. Félix Bracquemond
(1833-1914)

Canards Supris (Surprised Ducks)

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Canards Supris

Canards Supris (Surprised Ducks)

Etching, engraving and drypoint, 1882, 375 x 270 mm., Béraldi 778 undescribed state, B. N. Inv. 394 x/xi. Fine impression from the edition of 100 published by Frederick Keppel, ca. 1900, with the etched initial at the lower left, on thin, wove paper with good margins, signed in pencil. The first edtion was published in 1887, but Keppel's edition, is not inferior. One might note, in the image, the classically modest pose of the nude bather when confronted by three ducks (i.e. not a human being). It is, as Robert Getscher points out in his catalog of a Bracquemond exhibition drawn from the John Taylor Arms collection, a sign of the artist's anthropomorphism. If one thinks of ducks in terms of human characteristics, one pictures them, and reactions to them, very differently than if one thinks of them as mere staffage.