Abel Mignon

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

Abel Mignon
Born
Justin-Abel-François Mignon

(1861-12-02)December 2, 1861
Bordeaux
DiedJanuary 30, 1936(1936-01-30) (aged 74)
Fontainebleau
Resting placeFontainebleau cemetery
NationalityFrench
Known forEngraving postage stamps and posters
Notable workLe Travail, Caisse d’Amortissement postage stamp
FamilyYvonne Bouisset-Mignon
AwardsLegion of Honour
1908

Family life and education

Justin Abel François Xavier Mignon was born in Bordeaux on 2 December 1861.[1]

During his youth Mignon composed poems in association with Léonce Burret, Charles Fuster and Lucien Schnegg.[2]

He studied painting with Jean-Léon Gérôme and Alfred Loudet, and Louis Pierre Henriquel-Dupont was his engraving professor. He was admitted to the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1882, attempted the prix de Rome scholarship, and in 1884 won the second grand prix for engraving.[3]

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.[4]

On 30 January 1936 Mignon died at Fontainebleau and is interred there; his tomb features a bronze medallion portrait executed by Charles Virion.[5]

Career

Mignon's debut was at the Salon des artistes français in 1887, where he exhibited wood engravings in the style of Édouard Toudouze.[6] He was twice named laureate of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1903 and 1923). In 1908 he was awarded the Legion of Honour.[7][8] Between 1909 and 1923 he was commissioned by the Chalcographie du Louvre.[9][7]

In 1910 he ran, with success, as a candidate in the elections of Seine-et-Marne against Jacques-Louis Dumesnil.[10] Mignon then devoted his time to painting, inspired by Fontainebleau where he lived for a time before returning to engraving.[8]

1928 Le Travail Caisse d’Amortissement stamp
Poster for 6th National Loan in 1920

From 1913 he engraved postage stamps for the French colonies in Africa, such as Dahomey, Guyana, Madagascar,[10] some in the style of works by Joseph de La Nézière and from 1920 after Paul Albert Laurens and Jules Chaplain for the French post office.[11] He created posters for French national causes, such as the 1920 6th National Loan.[12]

His 1928 semi-postal stamp for the Caisse d'Amortissement, Sinking Fund, was the first to use the intaglio printing method.[13] The design was after a work by Albert Turin.[8] From 1927 he also worked for the Czechoslovak post office engraving stamps after the work of Jaroslav Šetelík.[14]

Lithographer and engraver Bertrand Bonpunt studied under Mignon.[15]

References
  1. "Mignon, Justin-Abel-François". ENSBA: Cat'zArts (in French). Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  2. Laroche, Ernest (2015). À travers le vieux Bordeaux: Récit et carnet de voyages (in French). Ligaran. ISBN 978-2012521650.
  3. "Mignon , Justin-Abel-François". ENSBA: Cat'zArts (in French). Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  4. "Bouisset Firmin | Les monuments aux morts". monumentsmorts.univ-lille.fr (in French). University of Lille. Retrieved 2021-04-11.
  5. Landru, Philippe (29 August 2009). "Fontainebleau (77) : cimetière". Cimetières de France et d’ailleurs (in French). Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  6. "Base Salons". salons.musee-orsay.fr (in French). Retrieved 2021-04-11.
  7. "Vue de la ville et du port de Bordeaux". Ateliers d’Art des Musées Nationaux (in French). 2019. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  8. "Le Travail, premier timbre-poste français gravé en taille-douce, 1928". Musée de la Poste (in French). Archived from the original on 15 February 2020. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  9. "Archives des musées nationaux, Département Chalcographie gravure, dessins et estampes du musée du Louvre (séries C, CG et CR): 1901-1951". Archives Nationales (in French). Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  10. "Abel Mignon: biography & list of his French stamp designs". www.phil-ouest.com. originally Musée de La Poste. Retrieved 2021-04-11.
  11. Nowacka, Monika (October 2014). "Abel Mignon (1861-1936) graveur méconnu". Timbres Magazine (in French). nº 160.
  12. Associés, Tessier & Sarrou et. "Tessier & Sarrou et Associés - Société de ventes aux enchères". Tessier & Sarrou et Associés (in French). Retrieved 2021-04-11.
  13. Brun, Jean-François; Nowacka, Monika (2012-06-01). "La fabrication des timbres-poste. Les procédés d'impression". Nouvelles de l'Estampe (in French) (239): 30–45. doi:10.4000/estampe.1020. ISSN 0029-4888.
  14. "Jaroslav Šetelík (1881-1955) - Abel Mignon (1861-1936)". Die Briefmarkengalerie tschechischer und slowakischer Graphik-Kunst (in German). Archived from the original on 20 January 2020. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  15. Édouard-Joseph, René (1930). Dictionnaire biographique des artistes contemporains, t. 1 (in French). Paris: Art & Édition. p. 164.

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. 
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