Auguste Danse

The Belgian painter and printmaker, Auguste Danse, who studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussels and was trained by Luigi Calamatta at the École de Gravure of the Dewasne Institute of Lithography, inaugurated the engraving class at the Academy in Mons in 1882 which he headed as its first professor. From 1905 he was a permanent member of the Académie Royale de Belgique. His extensive printed oeuvre comprises some 300 sheets, including around fifty portraits and numerous works of his own invention. A third of his output consists of reproductions after old Dutch and Italian masters as well as contemporaries such as Léon Bonnat, Honoré Daumier, Meunier and Émile Charles Wauters.

The latter is the author of the watercolour portrait in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (inv. RP-T-1950-24) that is reproduced here. The etching by Danse, which is in the same collection, is entitled there as The Beggar. The artist uses the etching needle to transform the broad brushstrokes of the watercolour into fine parallel lines, which are narrower in the dark areas and etched more deeply. The extremely refined and subtle etching technique is outstanding and similar in a way to the traces found in Impressionist paintings. A rare print, it is on offer here in a very fine impression of the second state with additional parallel lines in the background, with wide margins, inscribed in the artist’s own hand as “Epreuve d’artiste”. 

4.800 €