48 - François-Rupert Carabin (1862–1932)

François-Rupert Carabin (1862–1932) Parque. (Nude woman seen from behind, leaning on a scythe and holding a spindle). Circa 1900. Glyptography. 110 x 225 mm. A very fine print on glossy vellum, numbered and signed in pencil. Full margins. Provenance: Michel Romand (1929–2013), great-grandson of Edmond Sagot (1857–1917). The process of relief engraving by embossing—a technique favored by sculptors—was very popular around 1895–1900. Pierre Roche, Alexandre Charpentier, Henri Lefort des Ylouses, Oscar Roty, Maurice Dumont, and here, Carabin, all experimented with it. “In the *Revue Encyclopédique* of August 15, 1896, Roche described his process rather briefly to prevent counterfeits: “From a shallow bas-relief whose recesses are designed to reproduce, in the reverse image, the irregularities necessary to retain the ink, a plaster mold is made. It is within this plaster that the paper, compressed by hand, must absorb both the ink and the modeling.” Despite his precautions and the process’s complexity, the method proved successful and sparked a wave of imitations. The artist wrote in his journal on November 7, 1894: “Gypsographies are being imitated; I saw Sagot advertising them; he uses that term for any engraving with raised relief on the paper. He attributes the invention to Roche and has no idea of the process’s unique characteristics.” (Joëlle Raineau and Clara Roca, “Discovering the Secrets of Pierre Roche’s Studio,” Nouvelles de l’Estampe, 2022, no. 268). The model for these carved prints dates back to the masters of Japanese printmaking, who created their embossing using a Kara-zuri wooden matrix pressed directly by hand onto the paper. Europeans explored various techniques (wooden, plaster, and wax molds; and the compression of cigarette paper, as in Charpentier’s work) to achieve this bas-relief effect.