The French artist, writer and collector Marcellin Desboutin is best remembered today as a printmaker and as a friend and associate of the Impressionists; famously, he modelled the male figure in Degas’s painting L’absinthe (1875-76, Musée d’Orsay). With one exception, his prints date from 1872 (from which date, having exhausted an inheritance, he was forced to earn his living as a printmaker) or later. The majority of his prints consist of portraits of contemporary artists and writers.

Desboutin produced numerous self-portraits over the course of his career, both painted and etched. The present work portrays Desboutin in his mid-70s as an unapologetic bohemian, dressed informally (and in similar attire to that worn in L’absinthe), with long hair and beard, and smoking a pipe. It is not uncommon for Desboutin’s prints to bear dedications to the friends to whom he offered them, and this impression carries an inscription to the Franco-Belgian architect and critic Frantz Jourdain (1847-1935), best known as the architect of La Samaritaine – proof of the diversity and broad reach of Desboutin’s circle of acquaintances.

Eric G. Carlson (American, 1940–2016), from whom purchased by Donato Esposito in August 2013.

Inscription: Recto, lower right, just below platemark, handwritten in pen and brown ink : a Mr Frantz Jourdan / Sympathies artistiques / l'auteur / M. Desboutin

Inscription: Verso, lower right, handwritten in pencil : J. P15