?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET La Veillée.
Etching, 1855-56. 151x110 mm; 6 1/4x4 1/2 inches, full margins. Second state (of 2), with rounded plate corners. A superb impression of this extremely scarce, early etching.
We have found only 3 other impressions of this etching at auction in the past 30 years.
This is one of two etchings Millet (1814-1875) created, among eight different subjects, during his first productive burst with the printmaking technique which were the only ones not published. According to the art critic Philippe Burty, who wrote in the Gazette des Neaux-Arts, "Either because the varnish was badly prepared or because the acid was too violent, the metal was attacked so deeply that in printing it gave only a heavy image and was canceled after a few trial proofs." Melot cites five impressions in public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago (two impressions), the New York Public Library, and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (two impressions). Delteil 14; Melot 14.
