PIERRE-Paul PRUD'HON (after) (German, 1758-1823), "Innocence Choosing Between Love and sale Riches", 1889, mezzotint engraving after painting.

Image size: 7.3 X 5.9 inches. Mezzotint over photogravure after the painting of 1804, engraver unidentified, unsigned, printed on fine-grained, cream wove paper, 12.5 X 9 inch sheet. Published in the art review "Les Lettres et les Arts", 1889, Maison Goupil & Cie., Paris, 1889. Fine condition. Free shipping to US address.
(935144)

Note:
Pierre-Paul Prud'hon was born in Cluny, Saône-et-Loire, France. He sale received his artistic training in the French provinces and went to Italy when he was twenty-six years old to continue his education. On his return to Paris, he found work decorating some private mansions. His work for wealthy Parisians led him to be held in high esteem at Napoleon's court.

His painting of Josephine portrays her not as an Empress, but as a lovely, attractive woman, which led some to think that he might have been in love with her. After the divorce of Napoleon and Josephine, he was also employed by Napoleon's second wife Marie-Louise.

Prud'hon was at times clearly influenced by Neo-classicism, at other times by Romanticism. He was appreciated by other artists and writers, including Stendhal, Delacroix, Millet and Baudelaire, for his chiaroscuro and convincing realism. He painted Crucifixion (1822) for St. Etienne's Cathedral in Metz; it now hangs in the Louvre.

The young Théodore Géricault had painted copies of work by Prud'hon, whose "thunderously tragic pictures" include his masterpiece, Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime, where oppressive darkness and the compositional base of a naked, sprawled corpse obviously anticipate Géricault's painting The Raft of the Medusa.
(source: wikipedia.org)