Abel Mignon (2 December 1861 – 30 January 1936) was a French artist and engraver. He engraved

postage stamp A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail). Then the stamp is affixed to the f ...

s 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

Justin Abel François Xavier Mignon was born in

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( ; ; Gascon language, Gascon ; ) is a city on the river Garonne in the Gironde Departments of France, department, southwestern France. A port city, it is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the Prefectures in F ...

on 2 December 1861. During his youth Mignon composed poems in association with Léonce Burret, Charles Fuster and Lucien Schnegg. He studied painting with

Jean-Léon Gérôme Jean-Léon Gérôme (; 11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904) was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as Academic painting, academicism. His paintings were so widely reproduced that he was "arguably the world's most famous living art ...

and Alfred Loudet, and Louis Pierre Henriquel-Dupont was his engraving professor. He was admitted to the

Beaux-Arts de Paris The (), formally the (), is a French ''grande école'' whose primary mission is to provide high-level fine arts education and training. The art school, which is part of the Paris Sciences et Lettres University, is located on two sites: Saint-G ...

in 1882, attempted the

prix de Rome The Prix de Rome () or Grand Prix de Rome was a French scholarship for arts students, initially for painters and sculptors, that was established in 1663 during the reign of Louis XIV of France. Winners were awarded a bursary that allowed them t ...

scholarship, and in 1884 won the second grand prix for engraving. 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 Firmin Bouisset (2 September 1859 – 19 March 1925) was a French painter, poster artist and printmaker. Early life and education He was born on 2 September 1859 in the town of Moissac in the Tarn-et-Garonne département in southwestern France. ...

. On 30 January 1936 Mignon died at

Fontainebleau Fontainebleau ( , , ) is a Communes of France, commune in the Functional area (France), metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southeast of the Kilometre zero#France, centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a Subprefectures in Franc ...

and is interred there; his tomb features a bronze medallion portrait executed by

Charles Virion Charles Louis Eugène Virion (Ajaccio, 1 December 1865"VIRION, Charles Louis Eugène." ''Benezit Dictionary of Artists, Oxford Art Online'', Oxford University Press. Retrieved 23 June 2014. - Montigny-sur-Loing, 30 December 1946) was a noted Fr ...

Career

Mignon's debut was at the

Salon des artistes français The Salon (), or rarely Paris Salon (French: ''Salon de Paris'' ), beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial art event in the Western world. At the ...

in 1887, where he exhibited wood engravings in the style of

Édouard Toudouze Édouard Toudouze (1848-1907) was a French painter, illustrator, and decorative artist. Biography Toudouze was born to an artistically accomplished family. His father, , was an architect and engraver. His mother, Adèle-Anaïs Colin (1822-1899) ...

. He was twice named

laureate In English, the word laureate has come to signify eminence or association with literary awards or Military awards and decorations, military glory. It is also used for recipients of the Nobel Prize, the Gandhi Peace Award, the Student Peace Pri ...

of the

Académie des Beaux-Arts The (; ) is a French learned society based in Paris. It is one of the five academies of the . The current president of the academy (2021) is Alain-Charles Perrot, a French architect. Background The academy was created in 1816 in Paris as a me ...

in 1903 and 1923). In 1908 he was awarded the

Legion of Honour The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and Civil society, civil. Currently consisting of five cl ...

. Between 1909 and 1923 he was commissioned by the Chalcographie du Louvre. In 1910 he ran, with success, as a candidate in the elections of

Seine-et-Marne Seine-et-Marne () is a department in the Île-de-France region in Northern France. Named after the rivers Seine and Marne, it is the region's largest department with an area of 5,915 square kilometres (2,284 square miles); it roughly covers its ...

against Jacques-Louis Dumesnil. Mignon then devoted his time to painting, inspired by

where he lived for a time before returning to engraving. Stamp Fr 1928 Le Travail

6e_Emprunt_National_1920_Poster_by_Abel_Mignon

From 1913 he engraved

postage stamps A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail). Then the stamp is affixed to the ...

for the French colonies in Africa, such as Dahomey, Guyana, Madagascar, some in the style of works by Joseph de La Nézière and from 1920 after

Paul Albert Laurens Paul Albert Laurens (18 January 1870 - 27 September 1934) was a French painter. Biography Laurens was the eldest son of painter Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921), who was of humble origins, and his wife, Madeleine Willemsens (1848-1913). Laurens w ...

and Jules Chaplain for the French post office. He created posters for French national causes, such as the 1920 6th National Loan. His 1928

semi-postal stamp A semi-postal stamp or semipostal stamp, also known as a charity stamp, is a postage stamp issued to raise money for a particular purpose (such as a charitable cause) and sold at a premium over the postal value. Typically the stamp shows two den ...

for the Caisse d'Amortissement, Sinking Fund, was the first to use the

intaglio printing Intaglio ( ; ) is the family of printing and printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface and the incised line or sunken area holds the ink. It is the direct opposite of a relief print where the parts of the matrix that m ...

method. The design was after a work by Albert Turin. From 1927 he also worked for the Czechoslovak post office engraving stamps after the work of Jaroslav Šetelík. Lithographer and engraver Bertrand Bonpunt studied under Mignon.

References

Bibliography

* 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. {{DEFAULTSORT:Mignon, Abel Prix de Rome for engraving Knights of the Legion of Honour French poster artists 20th-century French engravers 20th-century French male artists 19th-century French engravers 19th-century French male artists French stamp designers 1936 deaths 1861 births