Breaking Waves, September Tide
Medium
Woodcut from three blocks in water-based colors on cream laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 28.2 × 39.6 cm (11 1/8 × 15 5/8 in.); Sheet: 32.1 × 44.9 cm (12 11/16 × 17 11/16 in.)
Classification
woodcut
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
11311
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Louis-Auguste Lepére began his career as a commercial wood engraver, but in 1885 he decided to begin making his own original woodcuts. Moved by Japanese prints exhibited at the 1888 Exposition Internationale de Blanc et Noir and the 1889 Exposition Universelle, Lepére experimented with the color woodcut process. Breaking Waves pays homage to the ocean imagery popular in the islands of Japan and integrates a diagonally recessed shoreline with a horizon line just above the center elements that fin...
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...