Modern Bucolic
Medium
Woodcut in olive, fawn and salmon from two blocks on cream laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 36.2 × 39.5 cm (14 5/16 × 15 9/16 in.); Sheet: 36.4 × 54.9 cm (14 3/8 × 21 5/8 in.)
Classification
woodcut
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
11626
Art Historical Context
**Modern Bucolic** (1901) by Louis Auguste Lepère captures a serene pastoral scene through the lens of early 20th-century French printmaking. Lepère, a master engraver and illustrator active in Paris, drew inspiration from nature and everyday rural life, blending traditional European techniques with the bold influences of Japanese woodblock prints—a hallmark of the Japonisme movement sweeping Europe at the fin de siècle. This woodcut, housed in the Art Institute of Chicago's Prints and Drawings department, measures an impressive 36.2 × 39.5 cm, its cream laid paper providing a warm backdrop fo...
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...