Portrait of Rembrandt Bugatti.

Drypoint, 37 x 34,5 cm, Japan paper 53,5 x 43 cm, signed in graphite pencil lower right (folds at edges).

Rembrandt Bugatti (Milan 1884-1916 Paris) was the son of Carlo, the decorative arts artist, and the younger brother of Ettore, founder of the Bugatti brand. Enchanted by the animal world, he moved from Paris to Antwerp where the management of the zoo there put a workshop at his disposal. During WWI he volunteered as stretcher-bearer for paramedical work at a military hospital in Antwerp together with his friend Vaes but then caught tuberculosis. The experience of war triggered in Bugatti the onset of depression, aggravated by financial problems, which eventually caused him to commit suicide by gassing himself on 8 January 1916 in Paris, aged 31 years old.