Lucien Penat - "the Sick Child" After Eugene Carriere - Etching

Lucien Penat (1873-1955)
The sick child after Eugene Carriere (1849-1906)
1933
Etching 44x30 cm (sheet) / 29x22.5 cm (plate stroke)
Signed in pencil in the lower margin in part right: “L. Penat”
Dry stamp of the Societe Francaise des Amis des Arts (Lugt 121)
Cut-out lower margin, some creases and foxing

This etching is an engraving of an interpretation by Lucien Penat of a painting by Eugene Carriere, The sick child, presented at the Salon of the Society of French Artists in 1885. First Grand Prix de Rome for engraving in 1902, Lucien Penat led a career crowned with numerous decorations and official functions. Nearly 50 years after the creation of the painting, he exhibited in 1933 at the Salon of the Society of French Artists The Sick Child, according to Carriere; - chisel under n°4857. Our print is the translation in etching published by the French Society of Friends of the Arts, whose dry stamp is affixed at the bottom left. This society in fact bought works from the Salons which it then reproduced to form albums of engravings each year intended for its members, with a print run limited to the number of members. In the case of this engraving, the print run was limited to 144 copies.
If the scene can be assimilated to a maternity, symbolizing the tenderness of a mother for her child, Lucien Penat nevertheless adds a remark in the margin a bottle of syrup and a spoon, allowing to explain it. Here it is indeed the concern of a mother who is represented and her desire to protect her young child, whom she wraps in her arms. Now kept at the Musée d'Orsay, the Carriere painting indeed represents the painter's wife and their son, Leon, who died of a respiratory infection a few months later.

Work visible by appointment in Paris or Boulogne-Billancourt