The Sickly Cryptogam
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"'One day' (so wrote Méryon to Mr. Burty after having read the notice of his work in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts), ‘in one of the walks which I used to take in order to pass the time at the end of our sojourn at Akaroa, where we were placed to protect the French whalers, I saw in the corner of a wood of lofty forest trees this poor little fungus. Its ephemeral existence probably only dated back to the morning which had followed a rainy night. Distorted in form and pinched and puny from its birth, I could not but pity it. It seemed to me so entirely typical of the inclemency, and at the same time the whimsicality, of an incomplete and sickly creation, that I could not deny it a corner in my "souvenirs de voyage," and so I drew it carefully, intending some time or other to introduce it into one of my Akaroa subjects.'"--Charles Méryon, Sailor, Engraver, and Etcher (1879) by Burty |
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The Sickly Cryptogam (1860, French: Le malingre cryptogame) is an engraving by Charles Meryon.
See also