The Large Apple Market
Medium
Etching on tan wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 28 × 44.4 cm (11 1/16 × 17 1/2 in.); Plate: 31.5 × 46.3 cm (12 7/16 × 18 1/4 in.); Sheet: 37.3 × 52.2 cm (14 11/16 × 20 9/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
61389
Art Historical Context
Step into the bustling energy of late 19th-century Paris *The Large Apple Market* (1891), an exquisite etching by French artist Louis Auguste Lepère. Known for his masterful depictions of urban life, Lepère captures the lively chaos of a street market teeming with vendors, crates of apples, and everyday Parisians. Created during the Belle Époque this print evokes the sensory richness of the city's markets, like those near Les Halles, where commerce and community intertwined. Lepère's etching technique shines here, with intricate lines incised into a metal plate and bitten by acid to create fi...
About the Artist
Louis Auguste Lepère · 1849–1918
Louis-Auguste Lepère (1849–1918) was born in Paris on November 30 to the sculptor François Lepère, immersing him early in the artistic world. At age thirteen, he apprenticed in the studio of the English wood engraver Joseph Burn-Smeeton, training there from 1862 to 1867, and later attended drawing courses under Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran at the Petite École (now École nationale supérieure des art...