32. Charles Meryon
(1821-1868)

Nouvelle Zélande . Presqu’ile de Banks

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Meryon, Nouvelle Zélande

Nouvelle Zélande . Presqu’ile de Banks

Etching, 1863, Delteil 69 v/vii, 157 x 324 mm.. Very fine impression on laid paper with full, large margins. Meryon, long recognized as one of the greatest of all etchers, is famous for his interpretations of old Paris. But years before he became an artist, he was a sailor, journeying, among other places, to the South Seas. Sketches he made at that time later became etchings. 1845 was not exactly the Age of Exploration, but to a Frenchman in his twenties, even one who had previously seen Athens and Algiers, New Zealand was clearly exotic. Meryon, as we know from his later work, was far from a literal topographer and put down what he saw in the way he wanted to see it. The idyllic, if exotic, scene here carries more than a hint of Rousseau’s “noble savage” theory: unspoiled, uncivilized beings working in harmony with nature in a landscape of abundance, artistically-arranged trees and unforbidding mountains, all under a sky bedecked with white clouds. It was a far cry from the gritty back streets and glorious monuments of medieval Paris. The subtitle here gives the precise location as the Pointe dite des Charbonniers à Akaroa, and the natives are fishing with seine nets.