Moret: the Wood-Mill
published 1908
Medium
Wood engraving in black on cream laid Japanese paper
Dimensions
Image: 12.4 × 15 cm (4 15/16 × 5 15/16 in.); Sheet: 20 × 24.2 cm (7 7/8 × 9 9/16 in.)
Classification
wood engraving
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
125001
Art Historical Context
Step into the serene French countryside with *Moret: the Wood-Mill* (1908), a delicate wood engraving by Louis Auguste Lepère. This intimate print captures the rustic charm of Moret-sur-Loing, a picturesque town along the Loing River southeast of Paris, famed for its water mills and artistic allure—Alfred Sisley painted there in the 1890s. Lepère, a master French printmaker (1849–1918), renders the wood mill's weathered structures amid lush foliage, evoking the quiet rhythm of rural life at the turn of the century. Crafted as a wood engraving in black ink on luxurious cream laid Japanese pape...
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...