L'Affûteur

Paris: Cadart & Luquet, 1876. Etching on watermarked D & C Blauw cream laid paper, 6 x 9 1/4 inches (151 x 234 mm), full margins. Significant toning, handling creases and some mottling due to moisture in the lower sheet area and into the image. There is some edge wear and creasing, as well as paper tape remnants along the top sheet edge, verso. Félicien Victor Joseph Rops (7 July 1833 - 23 August 1898) was a Belgian artist associated with Symbolism and the Parisian Fin-de Siecle. He was a painter, illustrator, caricaturist and a prolific and innovative print maker, particularly in intaglio (etching and aquatint). Although not well known to the general public, Rops was greatly respected by his peers and actively pursued and celebrated as an illustrator by the publishers, authors, and poets of his time. He provided frontispieces and illustrations for Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Charles Baudelaire, Charles De Coster, Théophile Gautier, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Stéphane Mallarmé, Joséphin Péladan, Paul Verlaine, Voltaire, and many others. Best known today for his prints and drawings illustrating erotic and occult literature of the period, he also produced oil paintings including landscapes, seascapes, and occasional genre paintings.