Rodolphe BRESDIN

Drawn in 1860, the present sheet is a particularly highly-finished drawing by Rodolphe Bresdin. As Dirk van Gelder and John Sillevis have pointed out, ‘Cities, villages and harbours appear in many variations throughout Bresdin’s oeuvre. Several prints by Adolphe Hervier were an important source of inspiration for this, particularly his etchings of old towns and villages along the Normandy coast. Hervier’s subjects, but also his style and technique, fascinated Bresdin and he continued to work with them throughout his life. He did so in a very personal way, and Hervier’s details were increasingly transformed into his own wonderful compositions…Bresdin worked intensively on this theme until his final years. The fantastic dream cities that belong to his last works still contain clear traces of this theme, although these compositions have a monumentality and drama that has little to do with the starting point found in Hervier’s early work.’

The scholar and curator Harold Joachim has noted that ‘Because of the extremely delicate and minute detail, Bresdin’s work demands concentrated unhurried study, and above all, a poetic sensibility and mind as attuned to the mysteries of nature as his own…Many of his drawings are done with a fine pen in India ink, and though they are generally of small size, their sureness and originality of line are such that they could stand – like the drawings of Callot – any degree of magnification without needing it.’

As Odilon Redon wrote of his master, long after his death, in the catalogue of the exhibition of Bresdin’s works at the Salon d’Automne of 1908, ‘His power lay in imagination alone. He never conceived anything beforehand. He improvised with joy, completing with tenacity the entanglements of the barely perceptible vegetation of the forests he dreamt up…He adored nature. He spoke about it softly, tenderly, with a voice that suddenly became convincing and solemn, thus contrasting with the usually whimsical and playful tone of his conversation. “My drawings are real, whatever one may say!”, he frequently affirmed.’

The first known owner of the present sheet was the Parisian art dealer and auction house expert Marcel Lecomte (1914-1996), who dealt in prints, drawings and books. He also assembled a personal collection of Old Master and 19th century drawings and prints, as well as 19th and 20th century books. Lecomte owned several prints (and a copper plate) by Bresdin, as well as at least one other drawing by the artist; a study of a house in Normandy, dated 1850.