Object Type: Prints

Creation Place: Europe, France

Medium and Support: Etching on paper

Credit Line: Carleton College Art Collection

Accession Number: 1998.059

Landscape art came to prominence during the second half of the nineteenth century in France. Appian, who trained with Camille Corot and Charles-Francois Daubigny of the Barbizon School, represented his native Lyon and the Rhone Valley in paintings and prints. Appian initially adopted etching as a means to reproduce his paintings. Soon he developed a sensitivity to the distinctive properties of the medium. In this marsh scene, the artist orchestrates a full range of linear marks, from the faint scratches in the sky to the bold, dark impressions creating birds and rocks.

Adolphe Appian was born in Lyon, France in 1818. Appian’s work is closely associated with the landscape of Lyon and surrounding areas. His charcoal drawings and paintings were exhibited regularly from 1853 in the Salons of both Lyon and Paris. There is a close relationship between Appian’s work and that of the Barbizon School, and in the Paris Salon of 1859 he was listed as a pupil of Corot and Daubigny. He maintained a connection to Paris through Maxime Lalanne, who served as Appian’s liaison with the publisher Cadart. He reached the height of his career in the 1860s and 1870s.

Appian’s foray into printmaking began with lithographs to reproduce his drawings. He also adopted etching as a means to reproduce his own paintings. However, he did not consider this technique as strictly imitative as photography or chromolithography would have been, but rather as a way to translate his paintings into printed works which took advantage of the formal qualities of the etched line. In his original etchings, Appian tended to represent landscape by impression rather than by description. In addition to etching, this artist produced a number of monotypes.