The collector and philanthropist Ivan Akimovich Repin, a hereditary honorary citizen of Astrakhan, was a true patriot of his small homeland. He amassed and then bequeathed to the city an exemplary public library and an extensive collection of Western European prints. In 1927, the Provincial Library transferred Repin’s collection of engravings to the Astrakhan Art Gallery.
The exhibition presents a lithographic sheet “Rose and Bud” from the series “Women of Europe and Asia”, which was created by the French painter, draftsman and lithographer Achille Jacques-Jean-Marie Devéria.
The “Women of Europe and Asia” series consists of 30 hand-painted prints. This series is also called “Le Langage des Fleurs” — “The Language of Flowers”. All images are symbolic and ambiguous. This is reflected in the titles: “Clover of Ireland”, “Rose of England”, “Lilac of Persia”, “Cobaea of Peru”, “Lily of France”, and “Tulip of Holland”.
Achille Jacques-Jean-Marie Devéria was born in 1800. He studied under Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson. In 1822, Devéria made his debut at the Paris Salon with vignettes and portrait drawings of 17th-century personalities. By 1830, he had become a successful book illustrator and a prominent portrait painter. His illustrations for Johann Goethe’s “Faust”, Cervantes’ “Don Quixote”, and Charles Perrault’s fairy tales are well known.
The print “Rose and Bud” is made in the technique of lithography, that is, engravings on stone. The impressions on paper are obtained by transferring ink from a flat printing plate — a lithographic stone (limestone) — by running it through the press. First, the image is made on the stone with an oil-based ink or a special lithographic crayon. Then the stone is treated with a solution that loosens the surface of the stone, providing a shallow depth. The greasy contours repel the solution and become convex. Thus, the shape for the prints is obtained. This method of printing allowed to obtain a much higher number of prints than all existing methods of printing at that time. Soon, lithographers learned to treat the stone with acid, deepening the applied pattern. Lithography can imitate chiaroscuro, as well as ink, pen, pencil and pastel drawing. It can also create the illusion of volume.
