andrea fisher fine art

As a former fine art and antiques dealer, I had the pleasure of selling 18th- and 19th-century French art and antiques at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, as well as procuring fine period art for private collectors worldwide. Although I no longer do this on a full-time basis, I am delighted to offer a small selection of fine French academic art through this site. These will include 18th- and 19th-century French academic drawings, prints, and paintings by artists who exhibited at the Salon de Paris and are represented in the world’s finest art museums. There will also be an occasional piece from artists who are not French, as well as pieces from my former gallery, also called Andrea Fisher Fine Art. 

Art pieces available for purchase are in the process of being posted and will include works by the following artists:  Gilles Demarteau (1722-1776, Engraver to the King), Louis-Marin Bonnet (1736-1793), Pierre Carrier-Belleuse (1851-1932), and Albert de Belleroche (1864-1944). (Note: Among the works available by Demarteau are a pair of chalk-manner engravings, printed in sanguine, with Royal provenance. These same prints are housed in the Musée du Louvre.)

For the purpose of historical reference, noted pieces which I have sold will also be included in these pages. Among these are a museum-exhibited sculpture by Alexandre Falguière (1831-1900) and a painting by French academic artist Charles-Amable Lenoir (1860-1926), who is considered by scholars to be the finest disciple of William Bouguereau. Additionally, from my personal collection, I am thrilled to share an image of a beautiful 18th-century French etching by François Boucher (1703-1770, First Painter to the King). The etching, titled La troupe italienne, was created for the famous ‘Recueil Jullienne’ and is after a stunning drawing by master Rococo painter and draughtsman Antoine Watteau.

It is my great pleasure to discover and study art from these periods, as well as share their beauty and history with others. I hope these pieces move you, as they have moved me. 

CHARLES-AMABLE LENOIR (1860-1926)
French Academic Classical Artist

Nymph With Garland

Charles-Amable Lenoir was born on October 22, 1860, in Châtellaillon (a small locality near La Rochelle). In 1882, Lenoir left for Paris and was soon admitted to L’École Nationale des Beaux-Arts. He also entered the Académie Julian, where he studied under the acclaimed William Bouguereau, with whom he would become a friend and colleague, as well as his finest disciple. In 1895, Lenoir had the honor of painting a portrait of Bouguereau’s wife, Elizabeth Gardner, who was a great artist in her own right. An acclaimed portrait painter, Lenoir was medaled in 1889, when he obtained the Second Grand Prix de Rome, second grade, and in 1890, with the Second Grand Prix de Rome, first grade.

Lenoir’s paintings possess gorgeous tonalities and haunt their viewer with nuanced brush strokes that magically transform a canvas into life. Similar to Bouguereau’s paintings, they capture the soul of their subject. Housed in exemplary private art collections and museums worldwide, his works continue to inspire and enchant. 

ABOUT THIS PAINTING:
Lenoir’s Nymph with Garland sold in my gallery, Andrea Fisher Fine Art, where it received museum interest. It is considered to be one of Lenoir’s finer works, it is closer in style to Bouguereau than some of his other pieces, which employed a looser brush stroke. I am grateful to my colleague, the renowned art scholar and author, Fred Ross, for authenticating this painting for my client. Mr. Ross, who is the foremost scholar in the world on William Bouguereau, co-authored William Bouguereau His Life and Works and William Bouguereau Catalogue Raisonné of his Painted Work. He is also founder of the online museum, Art Renewal Center.

I have been haunted by the beauty of this painting for many years; first when I had the privilege of living with it, and to this day, where she lives in my memory. At a later date, I will post a piece I wrote for my blog, inspired by the painting and titled, “Is That You My Beautiful Eugénie?” Eugénie Lucchesi was the artist’s wife and muse and it is my belief – from living with the painting and studying Lenoir’s oeuvre – that this Nymph is indeed Eugénie.

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ALBERT DE BELLEROCHE  (1864-1944)
Welsh born Painter and Lithographer, lived in England and Paris

Danseuse 
Oil on canvas – with an inscription on the back to his mistress, Lili – in its original frame it measures 29″ tall by 20.25″ wide –

– available – 

Albert Belleroche was born in Swansea, Wales on October 22, 1864. A descendant of the ancient French noble family, the Huguenots, he was a painter of portraits and genre scenes, a draughtsman, and a noted lithographer. At the age of 18, a young Belleroche was invited to study painting at the prestigious studio of Carolus-Duran in Paris. By 1887, he exhibited his first painting at the Salon, and, in 1894, became a member of The New English Art Club in London. (The New English Art Club was founded in 1885, as an alternative venue to the Royal Academy. Its members included John Singer Sargent and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.)

Belleroche was a founding member of the Salon d’Automne, which was similar to The New English Art Club, in that it offered an alternative venue for artists who were breaking from traditional, academic principles. There, he exhibited alongside the Impressionists, where he received the respect of his peers. Degas purchased his work as well as the French State, who acquired one of his paintings for the Luxembourg Gallery. Belleroche shared both a friendship and favorite model, Lili Grenier, with Toulouse-Lautrec. Lili would later become, not only Belleroche’s muse, but also his mistress. He was also a life-long friend of the acclaimed American painter, John Singer Sargent. The two artists shared studios in Paris and London and are said to have influenced each other; Sargent both admired and was inspired by Belleroche’s use of light.

By the year 1900, Belleroche focused his artistic efforts on lithography and became a leading figure in the field of lithographic portraiture. In lithography he achieved a delicacy of line, nuance in shading, and subtlety of tones that were comparable to painting. Because of this, they were termed ‘the rival of painting’. Belleroche’s drawings, paintings and lithographs are part of permanent collections of museums worldwide, including the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Tate Gallery. Additionally, le Musée d’Art et d’Histoire d’Orange exhibits an exquisite collection of the artist’s work, which were donated by Belleroche in his later years. In 2001, the San Diego Museum of Art organized a marvelous exhibit, from the museum’s collection of over one hundred twenty lithographs, titled The Rival of Painting: the Lithographs of Albert Belleroche. The exhibition catalogue, written by the museum’s Curator of European Art, Steven Kern, is a beautiful tribute to Belleroche’s lithography and to Belleroche, the artist. I highly recommend this catalogue to those who admire the artist and wish to learn more. 

ABOUT THIS PAINTING:
This gorgeous, bursting-with-life painting, captures the soul of a young, spirited Moulin Rouge dancer. Its life-affirming energy – its sense of movement – emanates beyond the canvas. A stunning work of art, Belleroche achieves a perfect balance between light and tones, as well as academic lines and loose brush strokes. The result is a timeless and most sensuous painting. The painting was a gift to his lover, Lili, and written on the back of its frame is the artist’s personal inscription. Now, this piece is also a love letter!

Below are two exquisite examples of Albert Belleroche’s lithography; both from my personal collection. The woman on the right is the beguiling Lili.

-john keats (1795 – 1821)
ode to a nightingale

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LOUIS-MARIN BONNET (French, 1736-1793)

Nu au drape

18th-century French, chalk-manner print after François Boucher’s drawing of 1767, titled Nu au drape. 

This exquisite, 18th-century French chalk-manner print uses black and white inks on blue paper to beautifully capture the sensuous and fluid contours of Boucher’s original drawing. 

Using fine-toothed roulette wheels to roll dotted patterns onto copper plates (along with other tools adapted from decorative metalworking) the chalk-manner printmakers created the illusion of an original chalk drawing. The colors and textures achieved through this innovation in printmaking made it possible for an art-loving public to afford works similar in poetic beauty to the coveted original chalk drawings created by the great 18th-century French Rococo artists. Interestingly, these prints were so exquisitely rendered that they too became works of art in their own right.

This print is also in the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago. It was a great pleasure to have lived with this beautiful work of art, until it found its new home. 

ABOUT BONNET:
Louis-Marin Bonnet and his colleague, Gilles Demarteau (who was Court Engraver to King Louis XV), were considered to be the most important engravers of two-color graphic reproduction techniques in 18th-century France. Delicately capturing the colors and textures of chalk drawings, they presented their prints in beautiful mats; even the sophisticated connoisseur would have believed these to be drawings rather than prints. 

Bonnet is also noted for successfully introducing the color white as a third color in formerly two-color chalk-manner printing. After further experimentation, he invented a method (using multiple plates) that allowed a fuller range of color on single chalk-manner prints. Capturing the quality of a full-color pastel, his invention was ambitious and remarkable with his crowning glory, Tête de Flore, printed from eight separate plates.

Jean Adhémar states, on page 135 of his text Graphic Art of the 18th Century, published by McGraw-Hill, 1964: “Louis-Marin Bonnet developed the process still further, and engraved in the ‘pastel manner’. He boasted his ‘secret’ in 1769, but had begun using this method in 1767, after trying to perfect the process for several years. Bonnet was born in Paris in 1736 (and died at Saint-Mande in 1793), studied under François (1757) and then under Demarteau, and began by inventing a method of printing to give the effect of a drawing a deux crayons, on blue or grey paper (in about 1767). His process for imitating pastel drawings ‘complete with all the colours, both light and dark, completely deceives the eye and equals the originals for the freshness and liveliness of the tints’. These are skillful facsimiles, which do indeed deceive the eye, especially when they are framed. Bonnet made reproductions after Boucher, and later after Huet, but his most successful piece is undoubtedly the famous Head of Flora achieved by a combination of different techniques and eight separate printings.”

I am delighted to announce that Bonnet’s exceptional, 18th-century, pastel-manner print Head of Flora (Tête de Flore) and its pendant Head of a Woman (Tête de Femme) are available for purchase. These pieces will be posted shortly. Both prints are after pastels by François Boucher and feature Boucher’s daughters. These masterpieces of printmaking are original 18th-century pieces and are rarely seen together.

Tête de Flore is part of the permanent collections at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Rijksmuseum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the National Gallery of Art.

RECOMMENDED READING:
For those with further interest in 18th-century French printmaking, I highly recommend the stunning book Colorful Impressions, The Printmaking Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France, by Margaret Morgan Grasselli, Curator, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. Chronicling the museum’s 2003-2004 exhibit of 18th-century French prints, the book explores the technical developments and aesthetic contributions made by the Enlightenment printmakers. Pages 68 – 71 are devoted entirely to Louis-Marin Bonnet’s Tête de Flore and include photographs of the eight progress proofs, as well as Bonnet’s written account of his methodology.

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 from my personal collection 

CHALK-MANNER PRINTS:
The chalk-manner prints are remarkable in capturing the nuanced and near-translucent lines of original chalk drawings. Replicating the colors and texture of chalk on paper, these exquisite renderings create the illusion of a drawing. It was a feat of trompe l’oeil ! To further the illusion, the engravers presented these prints in exquisite color-coordinated mats. The matted prints, framed and seen under glass, fully tricked the eye into believing these were actual chalk drawings. The chalk-manner technique was developed to allow art enthusiasts of the middle class to own a rendering of the coveted original chalk drawings, which were popular among mid-18th-century French nobility and fine art collectors. Ironically, these gorgeous renderings, which captured the ephemeral quality and spirit of an original chalk drawing, were so exquisite that they too became desirable works of art in their own right, especially among the upper class. Eighteenth-century French chalk-manner prints are part of permanent collections of art museums worldwide, including the Musée du Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Demarteau’s profound contribution to this form of printmaking, and his exquisite oeuvre, led to his becoming the preeminent engraver of his time.

THE TECHNIQUE BEHIND THE METHOD:
Prior to the creation of chalk-manner printmaking, engravers were using the burin and etching, which gave the appearance of line drawings. Since those techniques were ineffective in rendering the qualities of chalk on paper, new tools and techniques were required. The roulette, a small wheel with very fine teeth (along with other tools adapted from decorative metalworking), marvelously captured the quality of soft powdery chalk on paper.

MORE ABOUT DEMARTEAU:
Master engraver, Gilles Demarteau (1722- 1776), was born in Liège, to a family of armourers. He arrived in Paris around 1739, where he joined one of his brothers who was working as a goldsmith. As a printmaker, he created in the fashionable style of genre engravings with his passion being studies of women.

The chalk-manner style of printing, called crayon-manner in England, is attributed to Bord and Knapton, 1735, London and was further developed by Jean-Charles François, a French engraver from Nancy. François came to Paris in 1749, and it was there, in his workshop, that Demarteau began printing in the chalk-manner style. Demarteau, who was an exceptionally skilled engraver, refined and perfected the art of chalk-manner printing, raising it to a level of technical prowess and poetic beauty which captured the soul of drawing. In 1767, he became an associate of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture and, in 1769, an Academician. 

Demarteau had a close working relationship with the noted French Rococo painter and draughtsman, François Boucher. Boucher would become First Painter to the King and Demarteau, Engraver to the King. Their relationship was such that Demarteau not only created prints after Boucher’s drawings, but François Boucher also sketched drawings solely for him to engrave. Remarkably, Boucher granted both Demarteau and Louis-Marin Bonnet permission to embellish these prints.

Demarteau’s oeuvre is extensive and stunning. In less than twenty years, he engraved a thousand plates! The majority of his chalk-manner prints are after Boucher’s drawings, although many were rendered after another noted painter and draughtsman, Jean-Baptiste Huet. The above work is from my personal collection and is a gorgeous example of a Demarteau print after Huet. With exquisite delicacy and nuanced tones, once again the printmaker creates magic, while alluding to a chalk drawing. I am grateful that this beautiful piece of art lives in my home, where I have the opportunity to appreciate its beauty throughout the day.

Above is an image of the print’s markings. 

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“Shall I tell you of my crowded days or of my place of sleep?
My desires run riot and out of all paintings the angels follow me.”

-rainer maria rilke (1875-1926)