Japanese Mask

Japanese Mask is a beautiful etching realized by the French painter, engraver, lithographer, and typographer Henri Charles Guérard .

The artwork presents inside the matrix on the left the date “ 1875 ” and on the right the monogram “ HCG ” that characterizes the engravings of the artist. The state of preservation is very good. Indeed, it presents only a yellowing of the paper, especially on the margins where, on the higher left and right, light traces of fungal foxing appear.

Henri Guérard was an important French artist, well-known as engraver. He began his studies at the National School of Fine Arts of Paris in architecture, then painting and engraving. In 1973, he was one of the founders of the weekly magazine Incisione , with news, curiosities, and fantasy, as well as rich in illustrations. He was friends with Manet , and married his pupil, the artist and model Eva Gonzales . He was also friends with the most important Impressionist artists of the time, such as Cézanne, Adolphe-Felix Cals, Jules Chéret, Ernest Cabaner, Norbert Gœneutte, and together they spent a long time of artistic experimentation and work in Honfleur. Beside reproducing original artworks by his coeval painters, especially by Manet, Guérard realized splendid reproductions of famous paintings by artists like Botticelli, Corot, Rembrandt and Whistler. He also realized original engravings and humorous illustrations, many of which dedicated to the animal world: dogs, monkeys, cats, and even flies. His greatest passion were Japanese arts, introduced to him by the art historian Louis Gonse. In his production, Guérard was strongly influenced by the work of the Japanese engravers Ukiyo-e like Katsushika Hokusai, Kitao Masayoshi and Utagawa Kuniyoshi, embodying in his work traditional motifs drawn from those works and experimenting with Japanese traditional techniques. In 1883, Guérard took part in Art Japon  by Louis Gonse, published by Albert Quantin, and in Japonisme , a portfolio of ten engravings by Edmond Sagot.

This splendid etching can be appreciated in its context, with its charge of exoticism and grotesque irony typical of Japanese masks, made with an engraving technique of the highest level, with large and dark strokes, attesting the originality and artistic skills of Henri-Charles Guérard , one of the most renowned and respected engravers of the time.