1898
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Study for the woodcut 'Bassin des Tuileries' is a 1898 by Auguste Lepère, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A young girl in a white dress stands near a fountain in a Paris park. Trees glow with autumn leaves. People stroll in the distance. This is a practice sketch for a woodcut—a print carved from wood. Lepère brought the old method back to life in France when most artists had moved on. He drew every detail first, then cut the lines into wood to make the final print. Look up more works about France, 19th/20th century to see how other artists showed Paris at the time.
The printmaker Auguste Lepère is credited with reviving the woodcut at a time when it had fallen out of popularity in late 19th-century France. Lepère carefully sketched each aspect of his compositions—which often depicted Parisian life—before translating them to print. The young girl seen in this drawing figured in the foreground of an image depicting the Tuileries garden on a clear autumn day.
In the related finished print, the young girl seen here appears next to the Tuileries’s pond, which is filled with toy boats (a practice that continues today).
Read the full account in the museum source.
Louis-Auguste Lepère (30 November 1849 – 20 November 1918) was a French painter and etcher. Lepère is also considered a leader in the creative revival of wood engraving in Europe.
See the richer artist page
