Félicien Victor Joseph Rops (; 7 July 1833 – 23 August 1898) was a Belgian artist associated with Symbolism, Decadence, and the Parisian , a member of the Les XX group. He was a painter, illustrator, caricaturist and a prolific and innovative print maker, particularly in intaglio (etching and aquatint). Although not well known to the general public and initially sought after as a pornographer, Rops was greatly respected by his bohemian peers and actively pursued and celebrated as an illustrator by the publishers, authors, and poets of his time. He provided frontispieces and illustrations for works by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Charles Baudelaire, Charles De Coster, Théophile Gautier, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Stéphane Mallarmé, Joséphin Péladan, Paul Verlaine, Voltaire, and many others. Best known today for his prints and drawings illustrating erotic and occult literature of the period, he also produced oil paintings including landscapes, seascapes, and occasional genre paintings. Rops is recognized as a pioneer of Belgian comics.

Biography

Childhood and education (1833–1857)

Rops was born 7 July 1833 in Namur, Belgium, the only child of Sophie Maubile and Nicholas Rops. The Rops were a well-off bourgeois family, their wealth coming from textile manufacturing. Félicien was educated at his home by private tutors until the age of ten; then in 1843, he enrolled in a local Jesuit school for the next five years. His ability to recite lengthy passages from the Bible in Latin attest to both a good education and his intelligence, although even as a schoolboy it is reported that he had "begun to let fantasy dominate his thinking" and received complaints about "his passion for producing uninhibited caricatures of his teachers". Nicholas Rops died in 1849. After some disagreements between Rops and his mother over the direction of his future education, a compromise was reached, and in June 1849 he enrolled at the Athénée secondary school in Namur while simultaneously attending the Academy of Fine Arts there.

In 1851, Rops moved to Brussels and began studying law at the University of Brussels. However, by 1853, he was attending the Académie de Saint-Luc where he studied drawing and developed his skill as a draughtsman working from live models, meeting others like Louis Artan, Constantin Meunier, and Charles de Groux, and taking part in the local bohemian milieu. It was at this time that he began contributing caricatures, cartoons, and satirical lithographs to student magazines, in particular Le Crocodile which brought him some notoriety. In 1856, Rops, along with Victor Hallaux (pseudonym Victor de la Hesbaye) and Charles De Coster progressed from student magazines to founding their own journal, The Uylenspiegel, a weekly artistic and literary satirical review to which he contributed one or two lithographs an issue, more than 180 total, furthering his reputation.

Early career in Belgium, and marriage (1857–1870)

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In June 1857, Rops married Charlotte Polet de Faveaux, the daughter of a wealthy magistrate and owner of Thozée Castle (see external links below) in the countryside near the town of Mettet, Belgium. For the first few years at Thozée, Rops enjoyed a comfortable life of a country gentleman, pursuing passions for painting, botany, and even founding a rowing club in 1862, the Royal Nautical Club of Sambre and Meuse. He spoke highly of his father-in-law in his letters. Rops and his wife had a son, Paul, in 1858, and a daughter, Juliet, in 1859, who died at the age of five. Rops relinquished his managerial role at Uylenspiegel but continued contributing cartoons and illustrations until 1862. He began to explore etching and produced political lithographs, occasional caricatures and cartoons for magazines, and frontispieces and illustrations for books. He illustrated a number of De Coster's books including Légendes Flamandes (1858), Contes Brabançons (1861) and La Légende d'Uylenspiegel ('Tijl Uilenspiegel', 1867). His home became a gathering place for artists, writers, publishers and friends. The Société Libre des Beaux-Arts (Free Society of Fine Arts) in Brussels was founded in 1868 and Rops served as vice-president for several years. By the 1860s, Rops was traveling extensively and dividing his time between Thozée Castle, Namur, Brussels, and Paris each year; with ever extending time in Paris at the center of the art and literary world, and ever decreasing time at Thozée Castle and Namur with his wife and family as the decade passed.

In 1862, he studied etching with Félix Bracquemond and Jules Ferdinand Jacquemart in Paris and he became a restless experimenter with etching techniques. In later years, with his friend Armand Rassenfosse they developed a new soft ground varnish method which was dubbed "Ropsenfosse". In a letter to Édouard Manet (11 May 1865) Baudelaire wrote, "Rops is the only true artist (in the sense in which I, and perhaps I alone, understand the word artist), that I have found in Belgium." By 1866 Baudelaire and Poulet-Malassis were both in Belgium, in self-imposed exile evading creditors. Baudelaire stated that Rops and Poulet-Malassis were the only persons who "lightened [his] sadness in Belgium".

It was while visiting Namur, in March 1866, that Baudelaire's first symptoms of aphasia and hemiplegia became apparent. Rops invited Baudelaire and Poulet-Malassis to visit his hometown, where Baudelaire had seen and admired the baroque Church of Saint-Loup at Namur (see external links below) before, calling it "the masterpiece of Jesuit masterpieces" and stating the stained-glass windows illuminated the interior like a "terrible and delightful catafalque".

Later career in Paris (1871–1898)

The extended months in Paris away from his wife, and his poorly concealed extramarital affairs (described by his biographer Patrick Bade as his "careless contempt for bourgeois family values")

Rops was invited to join Les XX or Les Vingt, a group of Belgian artists formed in 1883 which held annual exhibitions and concerts at the Palais des Beaux-Arts and the Museum of Modern Art of Brussels. Founders of the Les Vingt included James Ensor, Théo van Rysselberghe, and Fernand Khnopff among others and were later joined by Anna Boch, Jan Toorop, Odilon Redon, and Paul Signac. Their intention was to protect "true originality" and provide a place "where people are free, not only in fact but above all in thought." For 10 years Les Vingt championed the work of progressive artists and composers of the time including many of the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Pointillists, and Symbolists.

Due to an accident with "bichlorate of potassium"

There is now a Museum, Musée Félicien Rops, in his home town of Namur, Belgium, housing approximately 3,000 engravings and 500 drawings and paintings. Rops also was a gifted and prolific writer of letters, most of which are located at KBR. Referring to Rops, Edgar Degas told Manet "That one writes even better than he engraves [...]. If they ever publish his correspondence, I'll sign up for a thousand copies of propaganda" His correspondences serve as valuable documents and references, not only for Rops and his work, but for the numerous artists, writers, publishers, and other notable culture figures of late 19th century Europe. The biographers of Baudelaire have drawn from Rops's letters extensively (e.g. but John Robert Reed's monograph Decadent Style (1985) argues that he depicted decadent themes without embracing the Decadent form of art. Rops achieved the reputation of a pornographer early on in his career, with his work featured prominently and his name advertised on the frontispiece of the British Victorian era pornography collector Henry Spencer Ashbee's Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1877). Some of his critics dismiss him as a novel, 19th-century illustrator/pornographer, but others look beyond the erotica and write of him respectfully and favorably. He was regarded as the greatest Belgian artist of his time by Baudelaire (an influential art critic as well as a poet). Jean-Luc Daval spoke of "the amazing upsurge of Symbolism that in the wake of Félicien Rops and under the influence of Gustave Moreau, characterized Belgian painting at the turn of the century." According to Edith Hoffmann, the "erotic or frankly pornographic" nature of much of Rops's work "is at least partly due to the attraction these subjects had for a provincial artist who never forgot his first impressions of Paris". The Cat, executed in an illustrative, near academic style, presents a pleasant likeness of a cat, yet embroidered on the chair is the phrase "Amica Non Serva" [Friend Not Servant], endowing this unassuming image with a declaration of sovereignty not immediately apparent to the casual viewer. Separated or Simian Spring uses an abrupt and serrated hatching technique to convey primitive, psycho-sexual undertones that anticipates expressionism in the early 20th century. traced Rops's depictions of lust to the witchhunters Jean Bodin and Pierre de Lancre. Rops's prostitution-themed artwork, in particular The Human Parody (1878–1881), fits into an iconographic tradition reaching as far back as the fifteenth century.

Huysmans highlighted Rops's use of woman as a symbol for moralistic social critique – a dehumanising device that Reed argues has the opposite effect to the Decadent concern with the decorative. Rops associated woman with death, materialism and a pursuit of pleasure that represented "a perversion of the higher craving for an impossible ideal". His portrayal of female figures has been placed in the context of turn-of-the-century concerns with female vampirism. Pornocrates mockingly proposes a "triumph of lechery over romantic love" as the outcome of the contemporary women's movement.

According to H. R. Blakeley, "scholarship about Rops disproportionately fixates on the erotic aspects of his art, reductively classifying him as perversely misogynistic instead of investigating the complexities of his relationships with and attitudes about women."

Fascinated by the processes, he was constantly experimenting with printmaking techniques throughout his career. Starting around the early 1870s, Rops begin using soft-ground etching, a technique practiced by few artists of his day, often combining it with mezzotint, aquatint, dry point, and other techniques, sometimes adding hand-coloring to the plates. He photo-mechanically (heliogravure) transferred many of his original drawings to intaglio plates, and often developed the images further in that medium with any number of techniques such as dry point, aquatint, soft-ground etching, etc. However, traditional soft-ground methods did not work well for his purposes, so in collaboration with his friend and colleague Armand Rassenfosse, they invented a process they called "Ropsenfosse". Ropsenfosse used several different soft-ground formulas and was likely the first soft-ground method used to produce color prints with two or more plates.

His etchings were popular and many of the progressive writers, poets, and publishers of late 19th-century literature sought out his talents for their publications. His prints were widely distributed in the books he illustrated and influenced many younger artists, including several Symbolists and Expressionist such as Max Beckmann, Lovis Corinth, James Ensor, Alfred Kubin, Fernand Khnopff, Max Klinger, Edvard Munch and others. The Blue Angel largely was inspired by a figure by Rops that impressed director Josef von Sternberg.

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File:Rops - Die Wracks - 1868.jpeg|Frontispiece for Les Épaves by Baudelaire (1868) etching (16 x 13,3&nbsp;cm) Musée Félicien Rops, Namur

File:Peladan, frontispiece for, The Supreme Vice (1884) etching and aquatint (11.75 x 7.78 cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art.tiff|Frontispiece for The Supreme Vice by Peladan (1884) etching and aquatint (11.75 x 7.78&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art

File:Felicien Rops, Péladan, frontispiece for, A Heart Lost (1888) soft-ground etching (16.67 x 10.8 cm) Los Angeles County Museum.tiff|Frontispiece for A Heart Lost by Peladan (1888) soft-ground etching (16.67 x 10.8&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum

File:Felicien Rops, The Lyre (detail) (1895) soft-ground and drypoint (22.8 x 15.7 cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art.tif|Frontispiece for Poésies by Mallarmé, The Lyre (1895) etching & drypoint (23 x 16&nbsp;cm) L.A. Co. Museum

File:Felicien Rops, Parallelism (ca. 1896) heliogravure (33.5 × 21.2 mm) The Art Institute of Chicago.jpg|Frontispiece for Chair [Flesh] by Verlaine, Parallelism (ca. 1896) heliogravure (33.5 × 21.2&nbsp;mm) The Art Institute of Chicago

File:20110526222429!Félicien Rops - Sainte-Thérèse.png|Sainte-Thérèse in ecstasy, 19th century

File:Felicien Rops, Parisian Masks (no date) heliogravure (29.2 x 17.2 cm) Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta.jpg|Parisian Masks (no date) heliogravure (29.2 x 17.2&nbsp;cm) Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta

File:Felicien Rops, Holocauste, Naturalia Non Sunt Turpia (What is natural is not dirty) (1895) heliogravure retouched with drypoint (21.6 x 15.2 cm) Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta.jpg|Holocauste, Naturalia Non Sunt Turpia (What is natural is not dirty) (1895) heliogravure, drypoint (21.6 x 15.2&nbsp;cm) Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta

File:Felicien Rops, Sentimental Initiation (1887) heliogravure, Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta.jpg|Sentimental Initiation (1887) heliogravure, Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta

File:Félicien Rops - Tanzender Tod.jpeg|The Dance of Death (ca. 1865) etching (55 x 37&nbsp;cm)

File:Felicien Rops, Flemish Madness (no date) aquatint (12.07 x 9.53 cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art.tif|Flemish Madness (no date) aquatint (12.07 x 9.53&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art

File:Felicien Rops, Japanese Salamander and Beetle (no date) aquatint (9.21 x 6.67 cm) Los Angeles County Museum.tif|Japanese Salamander and Beetle (no date) aquatint (9.21 x 6.67&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum

File:Felicien Rops, The Cat, Amica Non Serva, Friend Not Servant ( no date) etching (8.26 x 5.87 cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art.tif|The Cat [Amica Non Serva, Friend Not Servant] (no date) etching (8.26 x 5.87&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art

File:Felicien Rops, Separated or Simian Spring (no date) etching with aquatint (6.51 x 9.68 cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art.tif|Separated or Simian Spring (no date) etching with aquatint (6.51 x 9.68&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art

File:Felicien Rops, The Absinthe Drinker (1853–1898) heliogravure (335 × 225 mm) Art Institute of Chicago.jpg|The Absinthe Drinker (1853–1898) heliogravure (335 × 225&nbsp;mm) Art Institute of Chicago

File:Felicien Rops, Mam'zelle Gavroche and Erotic Poetry (1879) heliogravure (24 x 18 cm) Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta.jpg|Mam'zelle Gavroche and Erotic Poetry (1879) heliogravure (24 x 18&nbsp;cm) Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta

File:Felicien Rops, Celle qui fait 'Celle qui lit Musset' (1879) heliogravure (24.61 x 15.24 cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art.tif|Celle qui fait 'Celle qui lit Musset (1879) heliogravure (24.61 x 15.24&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art

File:Shaker Pianist (1888) etching (16.99 x 11.75 cm) ) Los Angeles County Museum of Art II.tif|A Shaker Pianist (1888) etching (16.99 x 11.75&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art

File:Felicien Rops, Strike, The Charcoal (1876) etching, drypoint (19.8 x 15.2 cm) Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta.jpg|The Strike (1876) etching, drypoint (19.8 x 15.2&nbsp;cm) Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta

File:Felicien Rops, Head of Zealander (1886) soft-ground etching (19.69 x 23.65 cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art.tif|Head of Zealander (1886) soft-ground etching (19.69 x 23.65&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art

File:Felicien Rops, Old Kate (1895) heliogravure & roulette (25.9 x 19.5 cm) Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta.jpg|Old Kate (1895) heliogravure & roulette (25.9 x 19.5&nbsp;cm) Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta

File:Félicien Rops (1833-1898) Een begrafenis in het Waalse land (1863) litho - Musée Félicien Rops Namen 23-03-2018 10-17-45.JPG|Funeral in the Walloon Country (1863) lithograph, Musée Félicien Rops, Namen, Belgium

File:Felicien Rops, Jean Brouette (1875) etching (19.84 x 12.86 cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art.tiff|Jean Brouette (1875) etching (19.84 x 12.86&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art

File:Felicien Rops, Parable of the Sower (no date) heliogravure, drypoint (16.3 x 11.4 cm) Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta.jpg|Parable of the Sower (no date) heliogravure, drypoint (16.3 x 11.4&nbsp;cm) Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta

File:Felicien Rops, The Kitchen of the Artists' Inn, in Anseremme (no date) etching (19.05 x 13.81 cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art.tif|The Kitchen of the Artists' Inn, in Anseremme (no date) etching (19.05 x 13.81&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art

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Les Sataniques and Les Diaboliques

As early as 1896, when a special tribute edition of the literary journal La Plume (No. 172, 15 June) was published honoring Rops, the illustrations he produced for d'Aurevilly's Les Diaboliques as well as an earlier series, Les Sataniques were often singled out and "placed at the top of the ropsian pantheon" and considered the "paradigm of the Ropsian work". Subsequent critics, historians, as well as his admirers among the general public have consistently regarded these prints as among the best examples of his illustrative oeuvre. Art historian Robert L. Delevoy wrote "His etchings for Les Diaboliques by Barbey d'Aurevilly are regarded as some of the best illustrative work ever done."

Rops wrote in a letter to Jean-François Taelemans (8 April 1886) that he was unsatisfied and the "small boards do not say anything". Nonetheless, art critics and historians have consistently noted the similarities.

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File:Felicien Rops, Barbey d'Aurevilly (no date) hand-colored lithograph (27.31 x 22.86 cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art.tiff|Caricature of Barbey d'Aurevilly (no date) hand-colored lithograph (27.31 x 22.86&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art

File:Diaboliques.jpg|The Sphinx, illustration for Les Diaboliques by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly (1879) pencil & watercolor (25 x 18&nbsp;cm) Brussels

File:Felicien Roips, Le Sphinx (no date) soft-ground etching (11.75 x 7.94 cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art.tiff|The Sphinx (ca.1887-1893) heliogravure, soft-ground etching (11.75 x 7.94&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art

File:Felicien Rops, Prostitution and Madness Rule the World ( no date) soft-ground etching (24.45 x 16.67 cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art.tiff|Prostitution and Madness Rule the World (ca.1887-1893) heliogravure, soft-ground etching (24 x 16&nbsp;cm) L.A. County Museum of Art

File:Felicien Rops, The Crimson Curtain (no date) heliogravure with aquatint and soft varnish (237 × 165 mm) Art Institute of Chicago II.jpg|The Crimson Curtain (ca. 1887–93) heliogravure, aquatint and soft varnish (23.7 × 16.5&nbsp;cm) Art Institute of Chicago

File:Felicien Rops, The Greatest Love of Don Juan (ca. 1886) etching, drypoint, aquatinte (23.5 x 16.2 cm) Royal Library of Belgium.jpg|The Greatest Love of Don Juan (ca. 1887–93) heliogravure, etching, drypoint, aquatinte (23.5 x 16.2&nbsp;cm) Royal Library of Belgium

File:Felicien Rops, Happiness in Crime (after 1874) etching, dry point, aquatint (23.8 x 16.5 cm) Royal Library of Belgium.jpg|Happiness in Crime (ca. 1887–93) heliogravure, etching, dry point, aquatint (23.8 x 16.5&nbsp;cm) Royal Library of Belgium

File:Felicien Rops, At a Dinner of Atheists (after 1874) heliogravure, aquatint, soft-ground varnish (24.8 x 16.6 cm) Royal Library of Belgium.jpg|At a Dinner of Atheists (ca. 1887–93) heliogravure, aquatint, soft-ground varnish (24.8 x 16.6&nbsp;cm) Royal Library of Belgium

File:Felicien Rops, Beneath the Cards in a Game of Whist (1886) heliogravure (9.05 x 6.03 cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art.tif|Beneath the Cards in a Game of Whist (ca. 1887–93) heliogravure (24.2 x 16.3&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art

File:Felicien Rops, The Vengeance of a Woman (ca. 1882-1886) etching (12.38 x 9.05 cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art.tif|The Vengeance of a Woman (c. 1882–1886) etching (12.38 x 9.05&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art

File:Felicin Rops, Woman & Madness Rule the World (1886) heliogravure (9.05 x 6.03 cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art.tif|Woman & Madness Rule the World (ca. 1887–93) heliogravure (24.2 x 16.3&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art

File:Felicien Rops, Happiness in Crime (1882) etching (12.38 x 9.05 cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art.jpg|Happiness in Crime (1882) etching (12.38 x 9.05&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art

File:Felicien Rops, At a Dinner of Atheists, Small boards (1882-86) etching (12.38 x 8.73 cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art.tif|At a Dinner of Atheists, (1882–86) etching (12.38 x 8.73&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art

File:Felicien Rops, Beneath the Cards in a Game of Whist (ca. 1882-1886) etching (12.38 x 9.05 cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art.tif|Beneath the Cards in a Game of Whist (ca. 1882–1886) etching (12.38 x 9.05&nbsp;cm) Los Angeles County Museum of Art

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Cartoons and caricatures

Félicien Rops was a pioneer and considered by many as the starting point for Belgian Comics. He was the first Belgian cartoonist to produce text comics, a comic strip based on a recurring character, satirical, and erotic comics. Rops began publishing comics in student magazines including Le Crocodile and Le Diable au Salon while still in school in the 1850s. He sometimes published using pseudonyms, including Spor, Risette, Graffin, Cham-Loth, and Croque-tout. With friends he co-founded a weekly artistic and literary satirical review The Uylenspiegel in 1856, which he contributed to regularly until its demise 1862. Examples of the early use of text comics and reoccurring characters include Les époux Van-Blague, the comedic experiences of a couple published in Le Crocodile (e.g. issue #40, 20 November 1853) and a series of thematically unified, but otherwise unrelated humorous episodes at the Antwerp Zoo Promenade au Jardin Zoologique. One cartoon in particular, 'La Médaille de Waterloo' (1858), depicting a decrepit, peg legged likeness of Napoléon Bonaparte on a medal, guarded by his devotee's from a hoard of skeletons rising from the dead, (in criticism of those who held Napoléon in honor with seemingly no regard for the havoc and loss of life that he had brought to Europe) caused an outrage in France and Belgium. However, ultimately this only served to further Rops notoriety. Rops published significantly fewer comics as his career as an illustrator of books progressed but, he produced occasional comics, caricatures, even advertisements, throughout his life.