Exlibris Insel has added a new bookplate to its range. It is available as a stamp or as a print. It is based on a painting by the artist Hercule Trachel, also known as Ercole Trachel, born in 1820 and died in 1882. The painting is entitled ‘Le paysan niçois faisant l’aumône’, known in English as ‘Nice Peasant Giving Alms’. The work depicts a classical-romantic scene in which a peasant family from the Nice region hands an elderly man a loaf of bread as alms.

Regarding the French painter Hercule Trachel, the following can be noted:

• Background & Education: Hercule Trachel was born in Nice, which at that time still belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont (Nice did not finally become part of France until 1860). He studied at the renowned Accademia Albertina in Turin under Charles Barbéri.

• Style & subjects: He is regarded as an excellent genre painter and a brilliant watercolourist. His speciality was capturing everyday life on the Côte d’Azur, the regional landscapes and the rural population in their traditional costumes.

• The artistic family: Hercule was not the only talented artist; his brothers Dominique and Antoine Trachel were also active as landscape painters and watercolourists.