Pieter Dupont
The Netherlands, 1870-1911 Portrait of T.A. Steinlen, 1901b
Engraving
Museum purchase: Lucy Shaw Schultz Fund, 1998.0690
Dupont is best known as one of a handful of artists who revived the exacting Renaissance art of engraving around 1900. In this portrait, Dupont shows the radical Swiss artist, Théophile Alexandre Steinlen (whose work is also exhibited here). Steinlen's graphic art appeared in many radical, socialist, and communist periodicals. He is shown in his studio near the books that strongly influenced him, including works by Karl Marx and Émile Zola. To his left and right are studies for a pair of lithographs titled Aujourd’hui and Demain [Today and Tomorrow] that appeared in the periodical Le Chambard Socialiste [The Socialist Upheaval] in March and April of 1894. “Today” shows a peasant family, including mother with babe in arms, harnessed to a plow. In “Tomorrow” the same family has triumphed over a landlord by pushing him into the soil
