Rendered in etching on laid paper in 1881, "An Episcopal Visitation" presents Léon Augustin Lhermitte at the height of his powers as a printmaker, translating his characteristic sensitivity to rural French life into the intimate vocabulary of the intaglio medium. The composition draws the eye through a carefully modulated web of lines, capturing the quiet drama of a church dignitary's arrival among common people with the same documentary empathy that defined Lhermitte's celebrated paintings and pastels of peasant subjects. The plate measures 24 by 19.5 centimeters, with the sheet extending marginally beyond to 25 by 20.5 centimeters, offering collectors a generous view of the surrounding laid paper and affirming the impression's integrity. Lhermitte occupies a distinctive position in the French naturalist tradition, often spoken of alongside Jules Breton and Jean-François Millet as an artist committed to dignified, unsentimental portrayals of agricultural and village communities. His printmaking is considerably rarer than his painted output, making signed etchings from this period genuinely sought after among those who collect nineteenth-century French works on paper. The work is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., lending it a distinguished institutional provenance that underscores both its historical significance and its quality as an impression. For collectors with an interest in French naturalism, rural genre subjects, or the golden age of European etching revival, this signed example represents a focused and meaningful acquisition.