Portrait of Huysmans

Eugène Delâtre

1894

Color etching with aquatint

Minneapolis Institute of Art

A man with a mustache and bald head sits with his hands clasped, looking forward. A cat sits to his right, and a statue of a praying figure is visible in the background. Eugène Delâtre was a French printmaker and watercolorist best known for his color intaglio prints of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was first recognized for his artistic prowess during the 1890s, when he contributed plates to such important French publications as L'Estampe originale (1893-95) and L'Estampe moderne (1897-99). Together with artists such as Theodore Roussel, Mary Cassatt, Manuel Robbe, and Jean Francois Raffaelli, Delâtre helped revitalize color etching in France both as a creative artist and as a specialist printer. This portrait is of the French Decadent poet and novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans (1