Rodolphe Bresdin (1822-1875) Bathers under the Palm Trees. 1871. Etching. 140x130. Van Gelder 134. Fine proof on cream laid paper, printed "à l'effet" (monotyped) on worn copper, from a posthumous edition (circa 1906). Good margins. Robert de Montesquiou writes of this subject, whose exoticism is atypical for Bresdin and precedes that of Gauguin by a generation. Gauguin by a generation: "A new women's bath, this one more poetic, and more Oceanian, groups like young Otahitians, between flights of hummingbirds, under the velvety greenery of the palms, Rarahu and her companions, at the Apiré stream, twenty years before Loti". (R. de Montesquiou, L'Inextricable graveur, Rodolphe Bresdin, Paris, H. Floury, 1913, p. 30).