?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
THEODORE ROUSSEL Summer.
Etching, 1888. 122x80 mm; 4 3/4x3 1/4 inches. Edition of approximately only 10. Signed and inscribed "imp" in pencil on the tab lower left. A superb, richly-inked impression of this scarce etching.
Born in Brittany, Roussel (1847-1926) studied art in Paris and eventually emigrated to London in 1874, married an Englishwoman several years later and remained in England the rest of his life. Roussel was living in Chelsea, Whistler's stomping grounds, when he took up etching in the early 1880s. Whistler saw some of Roussel's etchings at this time, very much in the manner of his own work, at one of his London galleries and asked the director Walter Dowdeswell to introduce him. Roussel was evidently in awe of Whistler; according to another Whistler follower, Mortimer Menpes, Roussel never wore a hat in Whistler's presence. To which Whistler remarked, 'At last, I have found a follower worthy of the Master,' (Getscher, The Stamp of Whistler, p. 148).
No other artist comes closer to Whistler's etching style of the 1880s/1890s than Roussel. He often drew the same or similar subjects around Chelsea, ordinary, everyday scenes of the people and public spaces, and he trimmed and signed his impressions on a tab like Whistler. Hausberg 5.
