PIERRE-PAUL PRUD'HON
Phrosine et Mélidore.

Etching, stipple-work, roulette and engraving, 1797. 343x251 mm; 13½x9¾ inches, wide margins. Second state (of 6). A very good impression of this scarce print.

According to Fisher, this is one of only a few prints with authorship firmly given to Prud'hon (1758-1823), the bulk of his graphic work consisting of designs drawn for other printmakers. Fisher notes, "This print is brilliantly executed entirely with gentle modeling in stipple . . . The stipple work is achieved partly with the etching needle and partly with a wide, irregular roulette. [Barthélemy] Roger (who assisted Prud'hon with the completion of the plate) and Prud'hon's first engraver, Jacques-Louis Copia, were carefully trained by Prud'hon in this stipple technique, which was essential to the interpretation of a painting style so indebted to the supple brushwork of Correggio (1489-1534). In this way, Prud'hon's style has a much wider impact than his small œuvre would suggest. For Prud'hon's tonal etching style . . . is almost a prototype for the romantic lithography of the early 19th century, especially for the prints of Chasseriau and Delacroix (Regency to Empire, French Printmaking 1715-1814, Minneapolis, 1984, page 312).

The etching illustrates a romantic episode from a poem by Gentil Bernard, in which Phrosine, driven by her passion and exhausted after having drifted across the sea to her lover Mélidore's island of exile, is awakened by his embrace and kisses. Goncourt 4.