Ludovic-Napoléon, comte Lepic (1839-1889) - Lot 162

Ludovic-Napoléon, comte Lepic (1839-1889) Etchings by Lepic. Comment je devins Graveur à l'eau-forte (Preceded by an essay, La Gravure à l'eau-forte, essai historique by Raoul de Saint-Arroman). Paris, Vve A. Cadart, 1876. A large album in-fol. [380 x 560] containing introductory texts and 37 etched subjects. Very fine proofs on chine volant, signed in blue pencil, mounted by the upper edges on vellum leaves, the latter damaged in the margins, with heavy freckling. Some plates detached from the mount. Median soft fold to one plate (exceptionally mounted on verso of another). Normal waviness to leaf edges. Soiling and foxing to text leaves. Applied cardboard (original cardboard missing). After describing his beginnings and trials and tribulations in the art of etching, Lepic tells how he approached Cadart and was favorably received by the publisher: "I even had a small success with a few amateurs who were there, and it was decided that Cadart would take charge of publishing everything I would like to entrust to them." Supported by Flameng, who urged him to exhibit, Lepic granted himself a new freedom: "From that moment on, I believed myself capable of anything. [...] Unable to achieve what I wanted with traditional or customary means, I let go of my temperament, fought with acid and my plate, and did everything I could to bring out the full effects of light and shadow. I organized my own tools, I dared to use pure acid, I slammed on my varnishes. Sand, sandstone, everything was good enough to achieve my blacks... [...] I was able to make my plates do whatever I wanted, and it seems to me today that by willpower you can make copper do whatever you want. [...] Freely made, the proof must be freely drawn; it is the artist who must draw himself. How often I have been able, with a flick of my finger or a dirty rag full of ink, to make a beautiful proof, where the consummate practitioner would only make a dry and graceless work! [...] In a word, I claim the paternity of mobile etching, i.e. the work of art that will enable us to break with vulgar usage, and the freedom of ink and rag that gives us such results." (Preface, Comment je devins Graveur à l'eau-forte).