Félix Bracquemond’s Portrait of Edmond de Goncourt, a historian of eighteenth-century art partly responsible for the rococo revival during the late 1800s and a proponent of japonisme, is a tour de force of printmaking technique. References to the sitter’s interests are seen in the plaster cast of a relief and an Asian objet d’art in the background. The silk cravat loosely tied at his throat and the wispy curls of cigarette smoke wafting in the foreground lend a casual and immediate air to the scene.

from Calendar of Events, Fall 2019