Toulmouche, Forbidden Fruit, 1881 Goupil Engraving
"Forbidden Fruit" a genuine photogravure, painting by Auguste Toulmouche, engraved and etched by Goupil, 1881; printed on heavy stock paper; signed in plate "Auguste Toulmouche, Pinx." and "Gravure Goupil et Cie."
"Forbidden Fruit" ("Le Fruit Defendu") by Auguste Toulmouche, painted in 1865, illustrating how young women have always rebelled against having their access to knowledge policed.
Nineteenth-century French and British families kept a close eye on the literature allowed to pass into the hands of unmarried girls (married women were not automatically exempt, either). While Toulmouche’s painting garnered great acclaim for its aesthetic charms when it was exhibited at the Salon of 1865, a contemporary male art critic’s sour aside summed up the prevailing attitude to independent female minds: "I do not approve of these silly girls; instead of searching forbidden pages for the knowledge that they lack, they would do better to leave tomorrow’s lover the pleasure of instructing them in the matters of which they are ignorant." [Paul Mantz quoted in Women Readers in French Painting 1870-1890 by Kathryn J. Brown].
In 1870s-1890s, Goupil & Cie were the leading art dealers in the 19th century France, with headquarters in Paris and a network of branches in London, Brussels, The Hague, Berlin and Vienna, as well as in New York and Australia. Instrumental for this expansion was the "Ateliers Photographiques", a plant north of Paris, in Asnieres, which took up its work in 1869. The photogravures created in this plant dominated the world art market of 1880s-1890s.
The creation of the photogravure plate was a complicated process requiring a work by a photographer and experienced master-engraver. First, a copper plate was coated with a light-sensitive gelatin tissue which had been exposed to a film positive, and then etched, resulting in a high quality intaglio print that can reproduce the detail and continuous tones of a photograph. It is a manual process. Therefore, the quality of the photogravure depends on the masterly execution by the engraver.
In contrast to steel engravings, photogravures leave a plate impression in the paper. Due to relative softness of copper, the editions of photogravures were limited to a few thousand copies similarly to copper engravings and etchings.
Auguste Toulmouche (September 21, 1829 – October 16, 1890) was a French painter known for his luxurious portraits of Parisian women.
Toulmouche painted in an idealizing version of the dominant academic realist style, and his subjects were frequently Parisian women who belonged to the upper bourgeoisie. His work was popular in both France and America, and the emperor Napoleon III bought one of his portraits, La fille (The Girl), for his future empress Eugenie in 1852, with further purchases by the imperial family the following year confirming Toulmouche's status as a fashionable painter. He was generally approved by critics, winning medals at the Paris Salon in 1852 and 1861, and he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1870. During his heyday, his reputation was comparable to that of artists like Alfred Stevens and Carolus-Duran. However, with their emphasis on sumptuous clothing and richly furnished domestic interiors, his paintings were also dismissed by some critics as "elegant trifles", and the writer Emile Zola referred somewhat dismissively to the "delicious dolls of Toulmouche". With the rise of Impressionism in the 1870s, his popularity suffered a decline from which it never recovered.
Much of his work is still in private collections, but the Louvre, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, and the Musee des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, hold examples of his work.
Artwork will be mailed unframed.
US: Priority (c 2-4 days) --------- $17.50
Canada: 1st Class (c. 2-8 weeks) -- $22.50
World: 1st Class (c 2-8 weeks) ---- $27.50
Condition Report: Heavy stock paper, design 6.3/4" x 9.1/2" [173mm x 240mm], the entire plate 10.1/2" x c.13.7/8" [265mm x 350mm]; a little foxing, very good condition.
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"Forbidden Fruit" a genuine photogravure, painting by Auguste Toulmouche, engraved and etched by Goupil, 1881; printed on heavy stock paper; signed in plate "Auguste Toulmouche, Pinx." and "Gravure Goupil et Cie."
"Forbidden Fruit" ("Le Fruit Defendu") by Auguste Toulmouche, painted in 1865, illustrating how young women have always rebelled against having their access to knowledge policed.
Nineteenth-century French and British families kept a close eye on the literature allowed to pass into the hands of unmarried girls (married women were not automatically exempt, either). While Toulmouche’s painting garnered great acclaim for its aesthetic charms when it was exhibited at the Salon of 1865, a contemporary male art critic’s sour aside summed up the prevailing attitude to independent female minds: "I do not approve of these silly girls; instead of searching forbidden pages for the knowledge that they lack, they would do better to leave tomorrow’s lover the pleasure of instructing them in the matters of which they are ignorant." [Paul Mantz quoted in Women Readers in French Painting 1870-1890 by Kathryn J. Brown].
In 1870s-1890s, Goupil & Cie were the leading art dealers in the 19th century France, with headquarters in Paris and a network of branches in London, Brussels, The Hague, Berlin and Vienna, as well as in New York and Australia. Instrumental for this expansion was the "Ateliers Photographiques", a plant north of Paris, in Asnieres, which took up its work in 1869. The photogravures created in this plant dominated the world art market of 1880s-1890s.
The creation of the photogravure plate was a complicated process requiring a work by a photographer and experienced master-engraver. First, a copper plate was coated with a light-sensitive gelatin tissue which had been exposed to a film positive, and then etched, resulting in a high quality intaglio print that can reproduce the detail and continuous tones of a photograph. It is a manual process. Therefore, the quality of the photogravure depends on the masterly execution by the engraver.
In contrast to steel engravings, photogravures leave a plate impression in the paper. Due to relative softness of copper, the editions of photogravures were limited to a few thousand copies similarly to copper engravings and etchings.
Auguste Toulmouche (September 21, 1829 – October 16, 1890) was a French painter known for his luxurious portraits of Parisian women.
Toulmouche painted in an idealizing version of the dominant academic realist style, and his subjects were frequently Parisian women who belonged to the upper bourgeoisie. His work was popular in both France and America, and the emperor Napoleon III bought one of his portraits, La fille (The Girl), for his future empress Eugenie in 1852, with further purchases by the imperial family the following year confirming Toulmouche's status as a fashionable painter. He was generally approved by critics, winning medals at the Paris Salon in 1852 and 1861, and he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1870. During his heyday, his reputation was comparable to that of artists like Alfred Stevens and Carolus-Duran. However, with their emphasis on sumptuous clothing and richly furnished domestic interiors, his paintings were also dismissed by some critics as "elegant trifles", and the writer Emile Zola referred somewhat dismissively to the "delicious dolls of Toulmouche". With the rise of Impressionism in the 1870s, his popularity suffered a decline from which it never recovered.
Much of his work is still in private collections, but the Louvre, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, and the Musee des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, hold examples of his work.
Artwork will be mailed unframed.
US: Priority (c 2-4 days) --------- $17.50
Canada: 1st Class (c. 2-8 weeks) -- $22.50
World: 1st Class (c 2-8 weeks) ---- $27.50
Condition Report: Heavy stock paper, design 6.3/4" x 9.1/2" [173mm x 240mm], the entire plate 10.1/2" x c.13.7/8" [265mm x 350mm]; a little foxing, very good condition.
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