Study for a Decorative Letter T with a Regency Marquis Standing near a Table

Date

1878

Creator

The publisher M. E. Bergerat apparently asked Bresdin to provide designs for his book 'Les Chefs d'oeuvre d'art à l'Exposition universelle de 1878'. The artist created two remarkably decorated initials that appear integrated with articles in the publication. A drawing for the letter A is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The design seen here shows an elaborately decorative costumed woman accompanied by a small, rather bizarre dog standing next to an extravagantly decorative construction, complete with a column and figures, in the form of the letter T. Various objects are displayed on a table or stand, perhaps representing some of the decorative works on view in the exhibition. The drawing, with its distinctly unconventional, claustrophobic use of imagery and animated graphic style, is characteristic of Bresdin's drawings and prints. Recently, another more fully developed but closely related version of the same design was available on the Paris art market. The Raclin Murphy Museum of Arts drawing is not only signed and dated 1878 by the artist, but is also inscribed to his daughter Rodolphine. Another sketch of the latter A, also inscribed to Rodolphine, is in the collection of Paris's Bibliothèque Nationale. Adapted from Spiro, Nineteenth-Century French Drawings (Notre Dame, 2007)