Galerie Paul Prouté

Born in Bordeaux in 1827, Maxime Lalanne initially pursued a career as a notary before devoting himself fully to the arts. Initially a draughtsman (working mainly in charcoal), he first explored printmaking through lithography (producing around fifty plates, of modest scale, between 1853 and 1858) before discovering the etching technique that was to radically alter the course of his career. From 1862, the year of his belated but dazzling debut at Cadart (his first plate, La Rue des Marmousets, is one of the most famous works in his oeuvre), Lalanne produced some two hundred engravings (landscapes and, above all, urban views, particularly of Paris), the exceptional technical skill of which (Lalanne mastered successive etching stages better than anyone else and was the author of the most influential treatise on etching of the nineteenth century) earned him success and honour.