Forêt de fontainebleau : le charlemagne et le roland

The practice of drawing earned Eugène Bléry recognition at the Salons from 1835 to 1837. From 1836 onwards, the artist devoted himself exclusively to etching, a process he used until the end of his career in 1878. Decorated with the Legion of Honour at the Salon at the same time as Corot, teacher of the engraver and draftsman Charles Meryon, Eugène Bléry never ceased to draw his inspiration for 42 years from the forests near Paris as well as from the landscapes he discovered during his travels in Savoy, Auvergne, Switzerland...
Technically he was getting to E. Bléry to draw the motifs that interested him directly on the copper and not according to his drawings in his workshop. In this sense he was one of the precursors of the "live work" which would make his fortune a few years later. Moreover, as a conscientious aquafortist and a diligent craftsman, he drew his proofs himself on his press.

His engraved work is divided into two parts. The first concerns landscapes (140 plates), the second part is a study of plants (65 copper plates engraved between 1843 and 1878). The chalcography of the Louvre has these 250 plates.
This engraver was innovative in more than one way. Indeed, at a time when paintings of history, battles and even oriental scenes were prized, his choice to engrave the landscapes of the forests of Fontainebleau and Senlis was a bold one, and these same subjects would be taken up by other artists in the decades to come. On the other hand, E. Bléry used etching, a process that had been abandoned by the Académie for almost half a century.