Adolphe Lalauze
Lalauze in 1898
Born	(1838-10-08)8 October 1838 Rive-de-Gier, Loire, France
Died	18 October 1906(1906-10-18) (aged 68) Milly-la-Forêt, Essonne, France
Nationality	French
Occupation	Engraver
Known for	Book illustrations

Adolphe Lalauze (8 October 1838 – 18 October 1906)^[1] was a prolific French etcher who made the illustrations for many books. He won various awards and was made a knight of the Legion of Honour.

Adolphe Lalauze was born in Rive-de-Gier, Loire, on 8 October 1838.^[2] His first job was a Contrôleur de l'Enregistrement.^[3] Lalauze worked in this civil service job in Toulouse for some time, then enrolled at the Toulouse École des Beaux-arts. He moved to Paris, where he became a student of Léon Gaucherel. Encouraged by Gaucherel, he took up etching, and first exhibited at the Salon in 1872.^[4] At the Salon in 1876 he exhibited twenty-one etchings. These included a series of nine called Le Petit Monde (The Small World) that depicted childhood scenes using his children as models, which won a 3rd class medal. He won a 2nd class medal at the Salon of 1878 for twelve plates illustrating the Histoires ou contes du temps passé by Charles Perrault.^[2]

Lalauze illustrated many books. He drew the Frontispiece for Le Bric-à-brac de l'amour (1879) published by Octave Uzanne.^[5] This book used revolutionary new photo-mechanical reproduction techniques.^[6] He illustrated the Peter Anthony Motteux translation of Don Quixote, first published in 1879.^[7] Lalauze made 21 etchings for the 1881 edition of Galland's translation of the Arabian Nights, and these were reproduced in several other editions.^[8] He was one of the illustrators of Damase Jouaust's 1882 Petite Bibliothėque artistique (Small Art Library), along with Pierre Edmond Alexandre Hédouin and Émile Boilvin.^[3] He created illustrations for Walter Scott's Waverley Novels published in Boston in 1893–94.^[9] In 1898 his illustrations in the pure fin de siècle style appeared in Sophie Arnould, actress and wit by Robert B. Douglas.^[10]

Adolphe Lalauze was a member of the Société des Artistes Français.^[11] He died in Milly-la-Forêt, Essonne in 1906. His son, Alphonse Lalauze, was also an artist.^[4]

Lalauze was known for etchings that depicted children, using his own children as models. He also made etchings that interpreted work by such artists as Charles Bargue, Pieter Codde, Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, Juan Antonio Gonzalez, Charles Green, Antoine-Jean Gros, Jean-Baptiste Huet, Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, David Teniers, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and Diego Velázquez.^[4] Lalauze made color prints by superimposing etched boards.^[3]

Some of his larger plates included "Love Story" after Frank Dicksee, "A Kiss from the Sea" after Hamilton Macallum and "The Entry of Charles V into Antwerp" after Hans Makart. His best work included "The Halt" after Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, etched for the magazine L'Art, and "Portrait of Madame Pompadour" after Maurice Quentin de La Tour, published by the Société des Artistes Français.^[2]

During his lifetime he was called "one of the most skillful original etchers of the modern French school."^[11] An 1889 book described him as an etcher with extreme facility who composed elegant vignettes and frontispieces.^[3] Later, Claude Roger-Marx criticized him for having fallen from interpretive drawing into a "laborious work of illustration" and of multiplying small compositions and vignettes.^[12]

• 1876 Salon Medal 3rd class
• 1878 Salon Medal 2nd class
• 1889 Bronze Medal at the Exposition Universelle
• 1895 Knight of the Legion of Honor,
• 1900 Gold Medal at the Exposition Universelle

• 
  Arabian Nights illustration
• 
  Arabian Nights illustration
• 
  Illustration from the Confessions du comte de *** by Charles Pinot Duclos
• 
  Pierre-Charles-Henri Fauvel 1892
• 
  French explorer Prince Henri of Orléans (1867–1901) c. 1897
• 
  French poet José-Maria de Heredia (1842–1905) c. 1897
• 
  French sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet (1824–1910) c. 1897

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Adolphe Lalauze.

• Works by Adolphe Lalauze at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Adolphe Lalauze at the Internet Archive