La Fontaine, Fables, Le singe et le dauphin. Eau forte originale sur papier Vergé

Very fine original etching before letters, heightened with aquatint and signed in the plate.
Executed on laid paper and protected by tissue guard at the request of publisher A. QUANTIN to illustrate La Fontaine's fable: "The Monkey and the Dolphin".
Very fine condition, presented in a modern black mat.
Auguste Delierre (1829-1891) is referenced as follows in Bénézit, dictionary of painters, sculptors, draughtsmen and engravers: "history painter, genre scenes, animated landscapes, still lifes, illustrator. Student of Eugène Ciceri, he participated in the Paris Salon between 1852 and 1889. His compositions of landscapes animated with hunting dogs show the influence of works by Desportes and Oudry which he copied for a long time. He also shows a predilection for still lifes. He also illustrated La Fontaine's Fables." Alain-Marie Bassy in his book Les Fables de La Fontaine, quatre siècles d'illustration analyzes his style for the representation of fables: "If he seeks the same angle of view on the animal as Gustave Doré, he dismisses any sense of terror. The bird wounded by an arrow is no longer a large migratory bird but the deliciously colored quail of still lifes." [...]Before [the animals among which we live], Delierre's eye is as cold as that of an entomologist. The art of the fable becomes in his work the finest example of pictorial naturalism." A deluxe edition in two volumes: Fables de La Fontaine. Edition illustrated with 75 etched plates by A. Delierre, Paris, Quantin, 1883, is catalogued at the Bibliothèque Nationale. The etchings of the fables are before letters and enclosed in pretty Louis XVI frames."