Etching on chine collé, mounted on cardboard. 24,1 x 21 cm (plate), 23,5 x 20,1 ( China paper), 32,2 x 24,8 cm (sheet), 44,7 x 31,6 cm (backing cardboard). 1854. Signed "Bracquemond" in the upper left of the plate.
In one of his earliest etchings, a caricature of the dreadful state of French criticism, Bracquemond, at only 21 years of age, places a cawing magpie with a quill in its talons in front of his opponents and himself on the pedestal in the caption "L'Artiste". On the globe that the feathered creature is preparing to scribble on, one can recognize terms such as "Frenchman" (or "French"), "Paris," "library," "opera," "museum," "palace," "academy," or "school," in other words, everything that is sacred to the French educated citizen. In the subtitle, Bracquemond reinforces his mockery with a description of the magpies from Ovid's "Metamorphoses": "Raucaque garrulitas studium que immane loquendi," which means "their hoarse chattiness, their boundless passion for talking." The print was originally called "A Magpie" and was only renamed "Margot - The Critic" in 1863 on the occasion of an exhibition by Bracquemond, in order to dispel even the last doubts about the ulterior motive of its depiction.
