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Pierre ROCHE

Pierre Roche (1855-1922) was trained first as a painter, but made his way into the art world by becoming a sculptor and a printmaker.  A few paintings and the odd interior sculpture will surface on the market at times.  However, what he is known for today are his monumental sculpture and his innovative embossed prints.  L’Effort in the Jardin du Luxembourg, and his Fontaine de l’Avril come to mind as sculpture.  As a printmaker he is known for developing a new technique, creating plaster molds from bas-reliefs, which he inked in color by hand, and printed onto thin sheets of wet Japanese papers.  Because of the fragility of the matrix used for these prints, Roche also eventually used metal plates in a similar manner.  This way he was able to prints slightly larger editions, of up to 100, instead of just a handful.  Roche is thus the father of what is today known as the gypsograph.  His esthetic can unequivocally be called symbolistic, with nudes, the figure, plants and flowers dominating as subjects.