Rops félicien

1874 · 516 — Brussels 1874. Etching with engraving and drypoint printed in brownish black ink on cream laid paper with a partial heraldic A and fleur-de-lys watermark 5 5/8 x 4 1/4 inches 341 x 107 mm full margins. In very good condition with cockling along the extreme sheet perimeter and a hard crease along the left margin approximately 1-inch inward from the sheet edge and well outside of the image area. Light notations in pencil in the lower left margin on the recto and in the upper right corner verso also well outside of image area. An impression of this work may be found in the permanent collection of the Musée Felicien Rops registration No. PER E0273.7.CF. Félicien Victor Joseph Rops 7 July 1833 - 23 August 1898 was a Belgian artist associated with Symbolism and the Parisian Fin-de Siecle. He was a painter illustrator caricaturist and a prolific and innovative print maker particularly in intaglio etching and aquatint. Although not well known to the general public Rops was greatly respected by his peers and actively pursued and celebrated as an illustrator by the publishers authors and poets of his time. He provided frontispieces and illustrations for Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly Charles Baudelaire Charles De Coster Théophile Gautier Joris-Karl Huysmans Stéphane Mallarmé Joséphin Péladan Paul Verlaine Voltaire and many others. Best known today for his prints and drawings illustrating erotic and occult literature of the period he also produced oil paintings including landscapes seascapes and occasional genre paintings. unknown