Portrait d'Edmond de Goncourt

Félix Bracquemond's enigmatic portrait of his friend, the author and art theorist Edmond de Goncourt, was commissioned by de Goncourt himself in 1879. The preliminary drawing was shown in 1880 at the fifth exhibition of the Impressionists, and over the subsequent months Bracquemond developed the etching through eight different states (see the following lot for an example of the eighth, final state).
Alidor Delzant, to whom this fine impression is dedicated, was Edmond de Goncourt's friend and executor, and the author of a book on Paul de Saint-Victor, and one on the Goncourt brothers titled Les Goncourt, published in 1889.