Lithograph on deux chines appliqués, one yellowish tan and the other grayish cream, 1861. 650x498 mm; 255/8x195/8 inches (mount sheet), wide (full ?) margins. Edition of approximately 200. Printed by Lemercier, Paris, with the printed address lower center. A brilliant, early impression of this important lithograph.
Lifetime impressions, such as the current work, are extremely scarce; we find only 3 others at auction in the past 20 years. There is also a more common, posthumous edition of approximately 800 impressions.
Despite his technically complex and highly imaginative printed work, Bresdin (1822-1885) remained in obscurity and penniless throughout most of his career. One of the most visionary printmakers since Rembrandt, he was clearly a devotee of the master's work, evidenced both in his early engravings and lithographs of intimate interior genre scenes and by a comparison of the current work and the preceeding lot. Like Rembrandt's The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds, Bresdin's tour-de-force lithograph shows a dark landscape rendered by a complex system of densely overlapped lines and varied tonalities. VanGelder 100.
