Deux bateaux à voiles, sur le sable [Two Sailboats on the Sand]

Like his friend Charles-Émile Jacque, Hervier picked up the etching needle early in his career, starting in the 1840s. His works were diminutive, but endlessly inventive in their technique and charm. He experimented with the roulette (a tool used to roll over the plate), with aquatint (a process introducing a granular material into the etching ground through which the surface is bitten in order to produce tone without line) as in this example, and with chine collé (a tissue-thin paper adhered to the support before printing to add tone). This kind of innovation is what attracted the attention of artists such as Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet and Mary Cassatt.