Portrait of Meryon Sitting up in Bed

Art Historical Context

This intimate portrait, created in 1858 by French printmaker Léopold Flameng, captures the etcher Charles Meryon seated upright in bed. Rendered as a soft-ground etching or photogravure, the work belongs to the Metropolitan Museum’s collection of drawings and prints. Measuring just under nine by eleven inches on the plate, it offers a quiet glimpse into the private world of an artist during the height of France’s nineteenth-century etching revival. Flameng’s choice of medium highlights the era’s fascination with tonal, atmospheric effects that mimic drawings. Soft-ground etching allowed for d...

About the Artist

Léopold Flameng · 1831–1911

Léopold Flameng (1831–1911) was one of the most accomplished and influential French engravers of the 19th century, whose exceptional technical mastery and artistic sensitivity made him the preeminent interpreter of paintings by old and modern masters through the medium of engraving. Born in Brussels on November 22, 1831, to French parents, and dying at Courgent, near Paris, on September 5, 1911, F...