The Large Apple Market
1891, printed 1917
Medium
Etching on cream wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 28.3 × 45.2 cm (11 3/16 × 17 13/16 in.); Plate: 31.8 × 47 cm (12 9/16 × 18 9/16 in.); Sheet: 44 × 58.7 cm (17 3/8 × 23 1/8 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
93523
Art Historical Context
Louis Auguste Lepère’s “The Large Apple Market” offers a detailed glimpse of a bustling marketplace rendered through etching, a technique prized in the late nineteenth century for its ability to capture fine textures and atmospheric depth. Created in 1891 and printed on cream wove paper in 1917, the work measures 28.3 by 45.2 centimeters in the image area, giving viewers an expansive view of piled fruit and market activity that rewards close looking. Etching allowed Lepère to combine precise line work with subtle tonal effects, making it especially suited to recording the lively commerce and ...
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...