Denis Auguste Marie Raffet On Sale

Denis Auguste Marie Raffet was a French illustrator and lithographer. He was a student of Nicolas Toussaint Charlet and was a retrospective painter of the Empire. At an early age, he was apprenticed to a woodturner but took up the study of art at evening classes. At the age of 18, he entered the workshop of Cabanel, where he applied his skill to the decoration of China and where he met Rudor from whom he received instruction in lithography, in the practice of which he was to rise to fame. He then entered the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts but returned to lithography in 1830 when he produced on stone his famous designs of Lützen, Waterloo, Le bal, La revue and Les adieux de la garrison, by which his reputation became immediately established. Raffet's chief works were his lithographs of the Napoleonic campaigns, from Egypt to Waterloo, vigorous designs inspired by ardent patriotic enthusiasm. In this endeavor, he was a contemporary of other French artist-lithographers of Napoleon and the French army, including Joseph Louis Hippolyte Bellangé, Émile Jean-Horace Vernet and Nicolas Toussaint Charlet. As an illustrator, his activity was prodigious. The list of works illustrated by his crayon amounting to about 45, among which are Béranger's poems, The History of the French Revolution by Louis Adolphe Thiers, the Histoire de Napoléon by Jacques Marquet De Norvins, the novel of Walter Scott by Auguste Jean-Baptiste Defauconpret, Plutarch’s work in French and Frédéric Bérat's songs. He went to Rome in 1849 and was present at the siege of Rome, which he made the subject of some lithographs, and followed the Italian campaign of 1859, of which he left a record in his Episodes de la Campagne d'Italie in1859. His portraits in pencil and watercolor are full of character. He died at Genoa in 1860. In 1893, a monument by Emmanuel Frémiet was unveiled in the Jardin de l'Infante at the Louvre, Paris. The statue was removed and melted down during the Nazi occupation of Paris.

The first decades of the 20th century were a period of artistic upheaval, with modern art movements including Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism and Dadaism questioning centuries of traditional views of what art should be. Using abstraction, experimental forms and interdisciplinary techniques, painters, sculptors, photographers, printmakers and performance artists all pushed the boundaries of creative expression.

Major exhibitions, like the 1913 Armory Show in New York City — also known as the “International Exhibition of Modern Art,” in which works like the radically angular Nude Descending a Staircase by Marcel Duchamp caused a sensation — challenged the perspective of viewers and critics and heralded the arrival of modern art in the United States. But the movement’s revolutionary spirit took shape in the 19th century.

The Industrial Revolution, which ushered in new technology and cultural conditions across the world, transformed art from something mostly commissioned by the wealthy or the church to work that responded to personal experiences. The Impressionist style emerged in 1860s France with artists like Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and Edgar Degas quickly painting works that captured moments of light and urban life. Around the same time in England, the Pre-Raphaelites, like Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, borrowed from late medieval and early Renaissance art to imbue their art with symbolism and modern ideas of beauty.

Emerging from this disruption of the artistic status quo, modern art went further in rejecting conventions and embracing innovation. The bold legacy of leading modern artists Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian and many others continues to inform visual culture today.

Find a collection of modern paintings, sculptures, prints and other fine art on 1stDibs.

Decorating with fine art prints — whether they’re figurative prints, abstract prints or another variety — has always been a practical way of bringing a space to life as well as bringing works by an artist you love into your home.

Pursued in the 1960s and ’70s, largely by Pop artists drawn to its associations with mass production, advertising, packaging and seriality, as well as those challenging the primacy of the Abstract Expressionist brushstroke, printmaking was embraced in the 1980s by painters and conceptual artists ranging from David Salle and Elizabeth Murray to Adrian Piper and Sherrie Levine.

Printmaking is the transfer of an image from one surface to another. An artist takes a material like stone, metal, wood or wax, carves, incises, draws or otherwise marks it with an image, inks or paints it and then transfers the image to a piece of paper or other material.

Fine art prints are frequently confused with their more commercial counterparts. After all, our closest connection to the printed image is through mass-produced newspapers, magazines and books, and many people don’t realize that even though prints are editions, they start with an original image created by an artist with the intent of reproducing it in a small batch. Fine art prints are created in strictly limited editions — 20 or 30 or maybe 50 — and are always based on an image created specifically to be made into an edition.

Many people think of revered Dutch artist Rembrandt as a painter but may not know that he was a printmaker as well. His prints have been preserved in time along with the work of other celebrated printmakers such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol. These fine art prints are still highly sought after by collectors.

“It’s another tool in the artist’s toolbox, just like painting or sculpture or anything else that an artist uses in the service of mark making or expressing him- or herself,” says International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) vice president Betsy Senior, of New York’s Betsy Senior Fine Art, Inc.

Because artist’s editions tend to be more affordable and available than his or her unique works, they’re more accessible and can be a great opportunity to bring a variety of colors, textures and shapes into a space.

For tight corners, select small fine art prints as opposed to the oversized bold piece you’ll hang as a focal point in the dining area. But be careful not to choose something that is too big for your space. And feel free to lean into it if need be — not every work needs picture-hanging hooks. Leaning a larger fine art print against the wall behind a bookcase can add a stylish installation-type dynamic to your living room. (Read more about how to arrange wall art here.)

Find fine art prints for sale on 1stDibs today.