Breakfast Preparations
Medium
Etching on cream laid paper
Dimensions
Image/plate: 13.5 × 19.8 cm (5 3/8 × 7 13/16 in.); Sheet: 18.2 × 23.9 cm (7 3/16 × 9 7/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
27766
Art Historical Context
**Breakfast Preparations** (1893) is a delicate etching by French artist Louis Auguste Lepère capturing the quiet intimacy of everyday life in late 19th-century Paris. Created on cream laid paper, this intimate print measures just 13.5 × 19.8 cm, inviting viewers into a moment of domestic ritual—likely a bustling kitchen or market scene where breakfast is being prepared. Lepère, a master printmaker (1849–1918), excelled in etching, a technique where acid etches intricate lines into a metal plate, allowing for rich tonal contrasts and fine details that mimic the spontaneity of drawing. Etching...
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...