Rodolphe Bresdin was a French draughtsman and engraver, born in Le Fresne-sur-Loire on 12 August 1822, who died in Sèvres on 11 January 1885.

His fantastic works, full of strange details, particularly attracted Charles Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Robert de Montesquiou and André Breton. Odilon Redon was his pupil. Bresdin influenced contemporary artists like Jacques Moreau, George Rubel, Jean-Pierre Velly, and Philippe Mohlitz. Bresdin's life story and his art are both extraordinary and fascinating. He was one of the finest and most original exponents of the art of print-making in the nineteenth century and his name ranks alongside those of Whistler, Doré and Meryon in achievement and influence.

Bresdin was, in part, a product of the Breton countryside with its sagacious, bardic folklore traditions, later beloved of Gauguin and his circle, and in part a refugee from the Paris Bohemia of Henri Murger with its dolorous, witty intonations. His portrayals of the household interiors of the rural poor show uncanny empathy with their inhabitants and rapport with the imaginative hinterland of their psyches. His series of the Holy Family's flight to Egypt was highly praised by Redon, who thought it Bresdin's best work, and by de Montesquiou. His depictions of nature, showing its seductive charm alongside its underlying menace are unique and some time spent with these works can change one's whole way of seeing the natural world.

Bresdin's life story is as dramatic and iconic as those of Van Gogh and Gauguin. It has the ingredients of a great Hollywood epic: childhood in the Breton countryside; a family row leaving him homeless in Paris and becoming part of the bohemian milieu with Charles Baudelaire, Henri Murger and Victor Hugo ; after the counter revolution walking 678 kilometres to Toulouse; living in the open air, workmen's and fishermen's huts; taking a wife and six children to Canada in pursuit of the dream of 'living off the land'; rescued and brought back to France by Hugo and the bohemian writers and artists; separation from the family and death in a garret room in Sèvres.