Portrait of Huysmans

Eugène Delâtre was a French printmaker and watercolorist best known for his color intaglio prints of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was first recognized for his artistic prowess during the 1890s, when he contributed plates to such important French publications as L'Estampe originale (1893-95) and L'Estampe moderne (1897-99). Together with artists such as Theodore Roussel, Mary Cassatt, Manuel Robbe, and Jean Francois Raffaelli, Delâtre helped revitalize color etching in France both as a creative artist and as a specialist printer. This portrait is of the French Decadent poet and novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907) in his writing studio. Huysmans is best known today for his controversial 1884 novel A Rebours (Against Nature), sometimes called the bible of decadence.