Louis Pierre Henriquel-Dupont (1797-1892), engraver
1st image: Soirée; 2nd: by Aristide Louis (1839); 3rd: by Bingham (c.1850); 4th: by Heim (1856); 5th: autoportrait (1869).
With his name indicated in Dayot’s gravure (1900) of Soirée au Louvre, Henriquel-Dupont has a fair, albeit not perfect match. Bingham’s photo from the early 1850s is a good match and so is Heim’s drawing from 1856.
(after Lehmann)
At the time of the first vendredi-soirées, the art of engraving was highly respected, and essential to publish and promote any work of art.
These were the days of artists like baron Desnoyers35, and his younger colleague Henriquel-Dupont. At the same time, the quick elimination of this profession by the end of the 19th century is manifested in this painting in the person of Regnault50a who was at the frontier of photography.
Louis Pierre Henriquel (who used the name Henriquel-Dupont like his father, an engraver) studied painting for three years with Pierre-Guérin, before he decided to continue with engraving and studied with Bervic.
At the age of twenty, his reputation, and the immense need for engravers, was such that he could afford to open his own atelier. He won his first price for engraving at the Salon of 1822 (when he still signed with Dupont), and he won gold medals at the Salons in 1853 and 1855.
Ingres39 admired his great precision, and had most of his portraits engraved by him. Other regular customers were Ary Scheffer41a, Lehmann (see his engraving of actress Rachel Félix81), and Flandrin79.
Critics applauded his excellent reproduction capabilities, though some considered his style cold and monotonous, rather than adapting his style to the type of art work.
His presence at de Nieuwerkerke's16 soirées was vital for artists to have their work published. His depiction in Soirée au Louvre must have been related to the completion, in 1853, after working on it over a period of ten years, of his engraving of Paul Delaroche’s Hemicycle mural at the Ecole de Beaux Arts. He received a vast salary for the work, and he generously donated the prize money he received for winning a medal for his work to the artist fund.
It was Delaroche who stated, after he saw the first results of photography:
« À partir d'aujourd'hui la peinture est morte. » (As of today, painting is dead).
History learns that the art of engraving died, and painting continued. By the turn of the century, reproductive engraving had become obsolete.
Henriquel became professor at the Ecole de Beaux Arts in 1863, and taught many new engravers, several of which had to find other sources of income in later life. His last exhibition was in 1867, at the age of 70. He is the only engraver that ever became Commander of the Legion d'Honneur (1878), and reached the respectable age of 95.