The Frog (La Grenouille) (plate, facing page 152) from Eaux-fortes originale pour des textes de Buffon (Histoire naturelle)
Pablo Picasso
Spanish, 1881–1973
1936, published 1942
An aquatint and drypoint plate in which Picasso transformed a page of Buffon’s Histoire naturelle into a lively, pared-down study of frogs, using print media to turn a scientific subject into an expressive image.
Set as a dense, inked rectangle on an otherwise empty page, the plate strikes with rapid, carved lines and high-contrast tones that make three frogs leap and crouch across textured lily pads like performers on a small stage.
Part of Picasso’s sustained experiments with etching and aquatint, this plate shows how modern artists refigured the illustrated book by bringing gestural, almost caricatural vitality to traditional natural-history imagery and expanding printmaking’s expressive range.
Medium
Aquatint and drypoint from an illustrated book with thirty-one aquatints
Dimensions
composition (irreg.): 10 9/16 x 8 5/16" (26.9 x 21.1 cm); page: 14 3/16 x 11 1/4" (36 x 28.5 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
The Louis E. Stern Collection
Accession
976.1964.30
Palette
Exhibitions
