Auguste BROUET
Auguste Brouet (1872-1941) was a pupil of Gustave Moreau at the École des Beaux-Arts. In the early 1890s he began making prints with the assistance and advice of the master engraver-publisher Auguste Delâtre. Brouet was a narrative artist above all else, and became a prolific illustrator of books, but he also has left a large oeuvre of single plates which need no accompanying text. These prints tell stories by themselves, for Brouet had a gift for transferring a great deal of life onto a small metal surface. His prints describe the everyday existence of humble city people, their joys, their quarrels, their unhappiness – but above all, their everlasting vitality. Part of their charm for us is that the stories are told with such humor and sympathy; part of their quality derives from the fact that Brouet perceived his subject in a manner colored by the art of the greatest of observers of life, Rembrandt.