Nude Girl Combing Her Hair
1887
Medium
etching with roulette on wove paper
Dimensions
plate: 18 x 12.5 cm (7 1/16 x 4 15/16 in.) sheet: 31.8 x 24.2 cm (12 1/2 x 9 1/2 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-E
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Frank Anderson Trapp
Accession Number
2003.118.6
Art Historical Context
In the intimate etching *Nude Girl Combing Hair* (1887), French artist Albert Besnard captures a moment of quiet domesticity and vulnerability. Created on wove paper with precise dimensions—plate measuring 18 x 12.5 cm—this print exemplifies Besnard's late 19th-century mastery of printmaking during France's fin-de-siècle era, a time when artists explored the nude form to blend classical beauty with modern sensibility. Besnard's innovative use of etching combined with roulette—a toothed wheel tool that imprints fine, textured lines—produces velvety tones and soft modeling, mimicking the fluid ...
About the Artist
Albert Besnard
Paul-Albert Besnard, known as Albert Besnard, was born on June 2, 1849, in Paris to an artistic family: his father, Louis Adolphe Ferdinand Besnard, was a history painter and pupil of Ingres, while his mother, Marie Louise Pauline Vaillant, was a noted miniaturist trained under Lizinska de Mirbel. Precociously talented, he began his training under Jean-François Brémond before entering the École de...