Jacques Gamelin
1969
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
wood engraving in black on wove paper
Dimensions
image: 11.75 × 6.19 cm (4 5/8 × 2 7/16 in.) sheet: 35.56 × 27.94 cm (14 × 11 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Jay Finkel
Accession Number
2013.121.88
Art Historical Context
**Jacques Gamelin** is a striking 1969 wood engraving by Leonard Baskin, an American artist renowned for his powerful figurative prints and sculptures that grapple with human mortality and history. This intimate portrait (image: 11.75 × 6.19 cm) captures the likeness of Jacques Gamelin, an 18th-century French painter for his macabre anatomical studies and dramatic history paintings, such as his iconic *Great Death* series.in, influenced by Renaissance masters and the grotesque tradition, often honored such figures through his prints, blending reverence with a modern, expressionistic intensity....
About the Artist
Leonard Baskin
Leonard Baskin (1922–2000) was a towering figure in American art, renowned for his monumental sculptures, powerful woodcuts, and intricate book illustrations that grappled with the human condition's darker facets. Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to a family of rabbis, he moved to Brooklyn's Jewish Orthodox Williamsburg neighborhood at age seven. Vowing to become a sculptor at 15, Baskin apprent...