107 - Félix Bracquemond (1833–1914)

Félix Bracquemond (1833–1914) Plucked Poultry. 1856. Etching. 245 x 343 [300 x 395 mm]. Beraldi 155; Bouillon Ac24. A very fine print on thin white laid paper, signed in pen and ink in the lower right corner of the copper plate. Slight waviness due to pressure during printing. Full margins. Extremely rare. From the collection of A. Beurdeley (Lugt 421). AABM stamp (Lugt 3075). "Despite its incompleteness, this 'remarkable and very rare etching' (Beraldi) marks one of the high points of Bracquemond’s early work. [...] today we must once again appreciate the extraordinary violence of this depiction—a frontal, symmetrical view, centered on the plate, of the skinned fowl, its protruding ribs and torn neck: here we find, perhaps for the last time, more than just a reference to the tradition of the “skinned ox,” the sadistic element that also appears in some drawings from this period. But the aesthetic choice of a “realistic” depiction is no less significant. [...] only a few trial prints were made of the plate: six, according to Burty, Beraldi, and Bracquemond himself [...] among the reactions it began to elicit starting in [1889], of particular note is *The Plucked Chicken*, an etching very similar to one by Henri Guérard (circa 1887)... " (Jean-Paul Bouillon, *Bracquemond, Absolute Realism: Engravings 1849–1859*, catalog raisonné, Paris, Skira, 1987, p. 110).