Henri Guérard

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Henri Charles Guérard (1846–1897) was a French painter and printmaker who worked mainly with etching and lithography. He studied architecture at the Paris École des Beaux-Arts but soon switched to painting and engraving, and in 1870 he studied with Nicolas Berthon. In 1873 he helped publish Paris à l’eau-forte, a weekly magazine of current events and amusements, with illustrations by Guérard and Paul Gachet. He befriended Édouard Manet, frequented Nina de Callias’s salon, and even appeared in Manet’s painting At the Café with Ellen Andrée.

In 1879 he married Eva Gonzalès, a student and model of Manet; they lived near Honfleur and hosted artists like Paul Cézanne. In 1881 he illustrated Les Caravanes de Scaramouche by Eva’s father, Emmanuel Gonzalès. Eva died in 1883 in childbirth, and Manet had died five days earlier, which deeply affected Guérard. He remarried in 1888 to Jeanne Gonzalès, his sister-in-law and also a painter. He did illustrations for L’Art Japonais by Louis Gonse and published his own Japonisme, a ten-etching album, with Edmond Sagot. In 1889, with Félix Bracquemond, he founded the Société des peintres-graveurs français, which exhibited at the Durand-Ruel Gallery. He was named a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1893. An avid collector, he gathered many odd objects, earning the nickname “The Engraver of Curiosities” because many of his etchings depict curious items.