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Abel Mignon

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Abel Mignon
Born
Justin-Abel-François Mignon

(1861-12-02)December 2, 1861
Bordeaux
DiedJanuary 30, 1936(1936-01-30) (aged 74)
Fontainebleau
Resting placeFontainebleau cemetery
NationalityFrench
Known forEngraving postage stamps and posters
Notable workLe Travail, Caisse d’Amortissement postage stamp
FamilyYvonne Bouisset-Mignon
AwardsLegion of Honour
1908

Abel Mignon (2 December 1861 – 30 January 1936) was a French artist and engraver. He engraved postage stamps for France, its colonies and for Czechoslovakia, as well as posters and currency. He studied at the Paris Académie des Beaux-Arts and was a Legion of Honour awardee.

Family life and education

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Justin Abel François Xavier Mignon was born in Bordeaux on 2 December 1861.[1]

During his youth Mignon composed poems in association with Léonce Burret, Charles Fuster and Lucien Schnegg.[2]

He studied painting with Jean-Léon Gérôme and Alfred Loudet, and Louis Pierre Henriquel-Dupont was his engraving professor. He was admitted to the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1882, attempted the prix de Rome scholarship, and in 1884 won the second grand prix for engraving.[1]

Mignon was married and had a daughter, Yvonne Bouisset-Mignon (1891-1978), who also had a career in engraving and was married to Firmin Bouisset.[3]

On 30 January 1936 Mignon died at Fontainebleau and is interred there; his tomb features a bronze medallion portrait executed by Charles Virion.[4]

Career

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Mignon's debut was at the Salon des artistes français in 1887, where he exhibited wood engravings in the style of Édouard Toudouze.[5] He was twice named laureate of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1903 and 1923). In 1908 he was awarded the Legion of Honour.[6][7] Between 1909 and 1923 he was commissioned by the Chalcographie du Louvre.[8][6]

In 1910 he ran, with success, as a candidate in the elections of Seine-et-Marne against Jacques-Louis Dumesnil.[9] Mignon then devoted his time to painting, inspired by Fontainebleau where he lived for a time before returning to engraving.[7]

1928 Le Travail Caisse d’Amortissement stamp
Poster for 6th National Loan in 1920

From 1913 he engraved postage stamps for the French colonies in Africa, such as Dahomey, Guyana, Madagascar,[9] some in the style of works by Joseph de La Nézière and from 1920 after Paul Albert Laurens and Jules Chaplain for the French post office.[10] He created posters for French national causes, such as the 1920 6th National Loan.[11]

His 1928 semi-postal stamp for the Caisse d'Amortissement, Sinking Fund, was the first to use the intaglio printing method.[12] The design was after a work by Albert Turin.[7] From 1927 he also worked for the Czechoslovak post office engraving stamps after the work of Jaroslav Šetelík.[13]

Lithographer and engraver Bertrand Bonpunt studied under Mignon.[14]

References

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  1. ^ a b "Mignon, Justin-Abel-François". ENSBA: Cat'zArts (in French). Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  2. ^ Laroche, Ernest (2015). À travers le vieux Bordeaux: Récit et carnet de voyages (in French). Ligaran. ISBN 978-2012521650.
  3. ^ "Bouisset Firmin | Les monuments aux morts". monumentsmorts.univ-lille.fr (in French). University of Lille. Retrieved 2021-04-11.
  4. ^ Landru, Philippe (29 August 2009). "Fontainebleau (77) : cimetière". Cimetières de France et d’ailleurs (in French). Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  5. ^ "Base Salons". salons.musee-orsay.fr (in French). Retrieved 2021-04-11.
  6. ^ a b "Vue de la ville et du port de Bordeaux". Ateliers d’Art des Musées Nationaux (in French). 2019. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  7. ^ a b c "Le Travail, premier timbre-poste français gravé en taille-douce, 1928". Musée de la Poste (in French). Archived from the original on 15 February 2020. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  8. ^ "Archives des musées nationaux, Département Chalcographie gravure, dessins et estampes du musée du Louvre (séries C, CG et CR): 1901-1951". Archives Nationales (in French). Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  9. ^ a b "Abel Mignon: biography & list of his French stamp designs". www.phil-ouest.com. originally Musée de La Poste. Retrieved 2021-04-11.
  10. ^ Nowacka, Monika (October 2014). "Abel Mignon (1861-1936) graveur méconnu". Timbres Magazine (in French). nº 160.
  11. ^ Associés, Tessier & Sarrou et. "Tessier & Sarrou et Associés - Société de ventes aux enchères". Tessier & Sarrou et Associés (in French). Retrieved 2021-04-11.
  12. ^ Brun, Jean-François; Nowacka, Monika (2012-06-01). "La fabrication des timbres-poste. Les procédés d'impression". Nouvelles de l'Estampe (in French) (239): 30–45. doi:10.4000/estampe.1020. ISSN 0029-4888.
  13. ^ "Jaroslav Šetelík (1881-1955) - Abel Mignon (1861-1936)". Die Briefmarkengalerie tschechischer und slowakischer Graphik-Kunst (in German). Archived from the original on 20 January 2020. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  14. ^ Édouard-Joseph, René (1930). Dictionnaire biographique des artistes contemporains, t. 1 (in French). Paris: Art & Édition. p. 164.

Bibliography

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  • M. Couvé, Abel Mignon, graveur, tome 1, Société philatélique de Fontainebleau, 2005.
  • Abel Mignon, in: Relais n° 100, revue de la Société des amis du musée de la Poste, décembre 2007. 
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