Godesberg, the Rhine

Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic (17 December 1839 – 27 October 1889) was a French artist, archaeologist and patron of the arts. He was styled as Vicomte Lepic until his father's death in 1875, when he succeeded to the title of Comte Lepic. He is best remembered today as a friend of Edgar Degas, who included him in some eleven paintings and pastels. He was among the original Impressionist group and later became a recognised marine painter. Lepic was the grandson of the Napoleonic general Louis Lepic, from whom the comital title had descended. His father was Louis-Joseph-Napoléon Lepic (1810–1875), who had a distinguished military career and was a close supporter of Napoléon III. Destined for a similar career, Ludovic persuaded his father to allow him to train as a painter instead, originally with Gustave Wappers, the official painter of the Belgian king, and later with the animal painter Charles Verlat, who encouraged him to take up etching. Much of Lepic's early work was in this genre, and he joined the Société des aquafortistes in 1862. His experiments with etching during this time were equally innovative, and he developed the technique of 'variable etching' (eau-forte mobile) where, by varying the ink on the plate, he was able to produce individual results at each printing. He was to teach this technique to his old friend Edgar Degas and the two co-operated on, and duly signed, Degas' large monotype The ballet master of 1874, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Lepic and Degas were friends as young men, with similar interests, and were to co-operate in other ways too. It was Degas who persuaded Lepic to help plan and participate in the first two Impressionist exhibitions, but insistence by the group that he should not exhibit at the same time in the official Salon led Lepic to distance himself from them. During this time, he had bought himself a boat and from 1877 paid annual visits to the town of Berck, south of Le Touquet, which was an artistic haven also for other artists on the fringes of Impressionism, such as Édouard Manet and Eugène Boudin. It is for his depictions of the beach and fishing boats there that Lepic is particularly remembered as a painter today. The appearance of Lepic in several works by Degas records some of the enthusiasms they had in common. Lepic's fondness for dogs, evidenced by his many etchings, resulted in Degas' final pastel of Lepic holding one in the Cleveland Museum of Art (1889).