| Abel Mignon | |
| Birth Name: | Justin-Abel-François Mignon |
| Birth Date: | 2 December 1861 |
| Birth Place: | Bordeaux |
| Death Place: | Fontainebleau |
| Resting Place: | Fontainebleau cemetery |
| Nationality: | French |
| Known For: | Engraving postage stamps and posters |
| Notable Works: | Le Travail, Caisse d’Amortissement postage stamp |
| Family: | Yvonne Bouisset-Mignon |
Abel Mignon (2 December 1861 – 30 January 1936) was a French artist and engraver. He engraved postage stamps for France, its colonies and for Czechoslovakia, as well as posters and currency. He studied at the Paris Académie des Beaux-Arts and was a Legion of Honour awardee.
Justin Abel François Xavier Mignon was born in Bordeaux on 2 December 1861.[1]
During his youth Mignon composed poems in association with Léonce Burret, Charles Fuster and Lucien Schnegg.[2]
He studied painting with Jean-Léon Gérôme and Alfred Loudet, and Louis Pierre Henriquel-Dupont was his engraving professor. He was admitted to the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1882, attempted the prix de Rome scholarship, and in 1884 won the second grand prix for engraving.[3]
Mignon was married and had a daughter, Yvonne Bouisset-Mignon (1891-1978), who also had a career in engraving and was married to Firmin Bouisset.[4]
On 30 January 1936 Mignon died at Fontainebleau and is interred there; his tomb features a bronze medallion portrait executed by Charles Virion.[5]
Mignon's debut was at the Salon des artistes français in 1887, where he exhibited wood engravings in the style of Édouard Toudouze.[6] He was twice named laureate of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1903 and 1923). In 1908 he was awarded the Legion of Honour. Between 1909 and 1923 he was commissioned by the Chalcographie du Louvre.[7] [8]
In 1910 he ran, with success, as a candidate in the elections of Seine-et-Marne against Jacques-Louis Dumesnil. Mignon then devoted his time to painting, inspired by Fontainebleau where he lived for a time before returning to engraving.
From 1913 he engraved postage stamps for the French colonies in Africa, such as Dahomey, Guyana, Madagascar,[9] some in the style of works by Joseph de La Nézière and from 1920 after Paul Albert Laurens and Jules Chaplain for the French post office.[10] He created posters for French national causes, such as the 1920 6th National Loan.[11]
His 1928 semi-postal stamp for the Caisse d'Amortissement, Sinking Fund, was the first to use the intaglio printing method.[12] The design was after a work by Albert Turin.[13] From 1927 he also worked for the Czechoslovak post office engraving stamps after the work of Jaroslav Šetelík.[14]
Lithographer and engraver Bertrand Bonpunt studied under Mignon.[15]