I offer you this 19th century engraving: NORBLIN DE LA GOURDAINE (1745-1830): Seller of rat poison.

Jean-Pierre Norblin de la Gourdaine (1745-1830) is an artist of French origin born in Misy-sur-Yonne in 1745 and who died in Paris in 1830

I have the honor to present to you this painter, designer and caricaturist who has his place with the greatest.

These first works are dated 1763. Around 1769 he joined Francesco Casanova as an apprentice, then he joined the Academy of Painting and Sculpture directed by Van Loo and Joseph Marie Vien.

Our artist loves traveling and we find him in Belgium, England and Germany where he is looking for a patron.

In 1772 he met the Polish prince Adam Kazimiez Czartoryski and entered his service. In 1790 he moved to Warsaw where he acquired a reputation as a Master and became first painter to King Stanislaus II of Poland who ennobled him. He founded an art school there during the same period.

It was in Warsaw that he had the idea of ​​rediscovering Rembrandt's technical secrets. They therefore began to study and analyze the prints that he could bring together, then he began to imitate them, tinkering with the effects of shadows and highlights. So much so that from each of them there remained up to six and eight states.    

In Poland Norblin de la Gourdaine has no need to negotiate engravings, they are therefore artist's experiments for his own pleasure, Polish prints are therefore very rare.

Among his very close students we find Heinrich Nether (1760-1819). Nether engraved works are sometimes attributed to his master as they are technically close.

The political events in Poland already fighting against Russia gave him the opportunity to create works which are powerful testimonies of revolts, battles, historical portraits until the massacre of Praga of 1794 which saw 20,000 Polish civilians perish under the blows of Russian soldiers caught by the drunkenness of blood. Some say that Norblin de la Gourdaine took up arms to defend his adopted country.

In 1804 he returned to France taking all his engraved copper plates, including those from Nether. Finally, he worked on his sketches that he had brought back from Poland and then on the Napoleonic battles.

Rembrandt's signature on some plates remains a mystery. Norblin de la Gourdaine died in 1830. After his son, Louis, inherited the plates he died in 1870 at the age of 88. The Polish collector Dominik Witke-Jezewski (1862-1944) bought 82 plates by Norblin de la Gourdaine in Paris and Nether which he donated with 40 engravings to the National Museum in Warsaw. The Germans, in cooperation with the Soviets, destroyed many of his multiple donations to Warsaw museums. However, 71 copper plates have survived and are still present in the National Museum.

The paper of the prints seems a very interesting avenue for differentiating the prints. 

We must always remember that Norblain de la Gourdaine sought to rediscover Rembrandt's technique and this necessarily involves testing papers!

Rembrandt used various media to print his prints: European papers, oriental papers, vellum and parchment. He thus obtained tests with very different effects.

To study Norblin de la Gourdaine, you must therefore know the man he was trying to imitate well and the papers are a very important element in the final result.

This artist, of great stature, is nowadays unjustly forgotten in his country of origin, but remains a myth in Poland.

We therefore offer you one of his creations, but the temporal positioning of this rare print on dark paper is for me late, like those presented in the vast majority of major Museums where Norblin de la Gourdaine is present from 1852 or 1853.