La Prostitution

This c. 1886 etching from the French artist, Paul Albert Besnard, measures 12 3/8 x 9 3/4 inches, pencil signed, editioned (three of 100), plate 10 of 12 from a series titled "La Femme", delteil 56(2nd state). Besnard studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and for the beginning of his artistic career concentrated on a very academic style of painting and composition, before adopting a more impressionistic approach of portraying light and color; later he went to England to study portraiture with Thomas Gainesborough and Joshua Reynolds.