Artist: Alfred Louis Brunet-Debaines (1845-1939)
Medium: Original hand pulled Copper plate etching on laid paper.
Signature: Signed in the plate, lower right.
Dimensions: Image size 7 x 10 1/8 inches.
Framed Dimensions: Approximately 16 x 19 inches.
Framing: This piece has been professionally matted and framed using all new materials.
The Senate House of the University of Cambridge is now used mainly for degree ceremonies. It was formerly also used for meetings of the Council of the Senate. The building, which is situated in the centre of the city between King’s and Gonville and Caius Colleges, was designed by architect James Gibbs, based to an unclear extent on designs by the gentleman-architect Sir James Burrough, and built in 1722–1730 by Gibbs in a neo-classical style using Portland stone. The ceremony to lay the first stone was performed by Thomas Crosse, then Vice-Chancellor, on 22 June 1722. The site was previously used for houses, which were purchased by an Act of Parliament, dated 11 June 1720. It was officially opened in July 1730, although the western end was not completed until 1768. The Senate House was originally intended to be one side of a quadrangle, however the rest of the structure was never completed. It forms part of the Old Schools Site. It is a Grade I listed building.
Alfred-Louis Brunet-Debaines (5 November 1845 – 1939) was a French artist and printmaker who depicted street scenes and architecture, and who was the son of the architect Charles-Louis-Fortuné Brunet-Debaines. In 1863, he began his art studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. During this period he learned etching techniques under masters such as Maxime Lalanne and Jules Ferdinand Jacquemart (1837-1880). Alfred Brunet-Debaines exhibited his first etchings at the Paris Salon in 1866. Around 1870, he was invited to England by writer and critic Philip Gilbert Hamerton who commissioned him to contribute original etchings to his publications, The Portfolio and Etching and Etchers. Brunet-Debaines thus spent a considerable part of his prolific career in London and Scotland, and regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1872 and 1886. Museums in France and England include examples of his etchings in their permanent collections. In 1882, he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers. Museums in France and England include examples of his etchings in their permanent collections. Many of his works appeared in The Art Journal, an important Victorian annual dedicated to the visual arts and publishing original etchings by artists such as Axel Haig, James McNeill Whistler, Seymour Haden, Hubert von Herkomer, John MacWhirter, Birket Foster and others.