Amédée Varin ( 1818 - 1883)

French engraver, illustrator and photographer, born Pierre-Amédée Varin at Châlons-sur-Marne on 21 September 1818 and died at Crouttes-sur-Marne on 27 October 1883. He came from a family associated with the arts and was the brother of the engraver and photographer Adolphe Varin. The Musée d’Orsay records him principally as a graveur and photographer. Studied drawing under the painter Raymond Auguste Monvoisin before turning to engraving. In Paris he worked in the ateliers of Charles Geoffroy and Émile Rouargue, and established a reputation for engraving book illustrations and the depiction of works of art. His work encompassed burin engraving and etching, and he frequently translated drawings and paintings by other artists into engraved form.

Among his best-known illustrated publications are Les Fleurs animées, for which he prepared engravings after the designs of J. J. Grandville, and Drôleries végétales, ou L’Empire des légumes. He was also a principal illustrator of Eugène Nus and Antony Méray’s Les Papillons, métamorphoses terrestres des peuples de l’air, published in Paris in 1852 by Gabriel de Gonet.