Félicien ROPS (Namur 1833 - Essonnes 1898) The Catch, 1877 Coloured pencils, pen and brown ink on tracing paper. Signed lower right. (Horizontal fold and vertical fold, annotations of color on the drawing.) 76 x 57 cm Founder in Brussels of the international society of aquafortists in 1869 and founding member of the Groupe des XX in 1883, the engraver and draughtsman Félicien Rops was committed to magnifying women. In January 1877, he produced L'Attrapade in Paris, one of his masterpieces, in which two women presented as objects of desire face each other. After staining it with ink, the artist used this first version to make our tracing paper which he annotated before cutting it out. Félicien Rops then produced a second version of L'Attrapade, which can be seen in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (inv. 3567). We would like to thank Mrs. Monique Cuvelier-Ladot, President of the Fonds Félicien Rops (www.fondsrops.org) for confirming the authenticity of this work.