Artists and Amateurs Etching in 18Th-Century France

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For Immediate Release

Contact: Elyse Topalian Mary Flanagan

Artists and Amateurs Etching in 18th-Century France

October 1, 2013–January 5, 2014

WALL LABELS

Carle Vanloo

French, Nice 1705–1765 Paris

Title plate from “Six figures académiques” (Six Académie Figures), 1743

Etching, first state of three

Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Purchase with funds provided by the Friends of the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, 1995

The connection between drawing and etching is manifest in this print by Carle Vanloo, a painter and professor at the Académie Royale. It depicts a posed male nude, referred to in the eighteenth century as an académie. A student might copy such a print as the first step in learning to draw the human figure. Contemporaries praised the brio of Vanloo’s etching technique.

Cat. no. 1

Antoine Watteau French, Valenciennes 1684–1721 Nogent-sur-Marne

Recruits Going to Join the Regiment, ca. 1715–16

Etching and drypoint, first state of three

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Gift of Dr. Mortimer Sackler, Theresa Sackler and Family, and The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 2006 (2006.43)

Antoine Watteau

French, Valenciennes 1684–1721 Nogent-sur-Marne

Henri Simon Thomassin

French, Paris 1687–1741 Paris Recruits Going to Join the Regiment, ca. 1717–26

Etching, drypoint, and engraving, third state of three

The Art Institute of Chicago, The Amanda S. Johnson and Marion J. Livingston Endowment Fund

Watteau, considered the greatest painter of the Rococo period, made only a small number of etchings, each of which supplied a professional printmaker with a design to be reworked in engraving. The resulting plate was durable enough to withstand repeated printing in large numbers; such collaborative work also allowed for a darker, more tonally rich composition. Here, we can compare the first state of a print, with its elegant, flickering lines etched by Watteau, with its final state, reworked by Thomassin. In the latter version, which has lettering along the bottom, Thomassin made certain composition changes, notably the shifting of the rainbow to the right.

Cat. nos. 2, 3

Antoine Watteau

French, Valenciennes 1684–1721 Nogent-sur-Marne

The Clothes Are Italian, ca. 1715–16 Etching, first state of six

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

In this very rare first state, Watteau freely etched a scene of commedia dell’arte figures on a stage against a landscape background. Although the plate would subsequently be heavily reworked by a professional engraver for a large edition (see ill.), this proof state allows us to appreciate the liveliness of Watteau’s handling, as he varied his etched lines to model the actors’ faces and to convey the shimmer of their costumes and the leafiness of the foliage. Cat. no. 4 Illustrate fig.12 from the catalogue:

Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) and Charles Simonneau (1645–1728). The Clothes Are Italian. Etching and engraving. Bibliothèque de France, Paris

François Boucher

French, Paris 1703–1770 Paris

Andromeda, 1734

Etching, first state of four

François Boucher

French, Paris 1703–1770 Paris Pierre Alexandre Aveline

French, Paris 1702–1760 Paris

Andromeda, 1734 Etching and engraving, third state of four

Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Muriel and Philip Berman Gift, acquired from the John S. Phillips bequest of 1876 to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, with funds contributed by Muriel and Philip Berman, gifts (by exchange) of Lisa Norris Elkins, Bryant W. Langston, Samuel S. White 3rd and Vera White, with additional funds contributed by John Howard McFadden, Jr., Thomas Skelton Harrison, and the Philip H. and A. S. W. Rosenbach Foundation, 1985 Early in his career, Boucher, like Watteau, made etched sketches to be worked over and printed in large editions by professional engravers. In this pair one can compare the proof state of Boucher’s pure etching with a later state reworked by Aveline. In the first state,

Boucher used an improvisational technique to suggest and differentiate the textures of the scaly sea monster, the frothy waves, and the dimpled flesh of Andromeda, chained to the rocks. In the later state, in which the lettering indicates the contributions of each artist, the tonal range is greater but the textural variety and scintillating graphic language of the proof state is lost. The engraver also idealized Andromeda’s face and figure, adding a modesty cloth for reasons of decorum.

Cat. nos. 5, 6

Charles Joseph Natoire

French, Nimes 1700–1777 Castel Gandolfo

Summer, from the Four Seasons, 1735 Etching, first state of two

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Harvey D. Parker Collection

Charles Joseph Natoire

French, Nimes 1700–1777 Castel Gandolfo

Benoit Audran II

French, Paris 1698–1772 Paris

Summer, from the Four Seasons, 1735

Etching and engraving, second state of two

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1953 (53.600.2453)

Shortly after he was made a full member of the Académie Royale in 1734, Natoire collaborated with Aveline and Audran II to produce a set of prints depicting the Four

Seasons. They would have made more widely known his recent commission of overdoor paintings for Philibert Orry, comte de Vignory.

Here, the proof state of this charming allegory of summer exhibits Natoire’s delicate handling of the etching needle, as he used dots, dashes, and various irregular marks to portray Ceres in the guise of a child with her attendants, harvesting wheat. Audran II, in reworking the plate, heightened the contrast but obscured in certain passages the energetic and idiosyncratic quality of Natoire’s draftsmanship.

Cat. nos. 7, 8

François Boucher French, Paris 1703–1770 Paris

After Antoine Watteau

French, Valenciennes 1684–1721 Nogent-sur-Marne

Woman on a Swing, Viewed from Behind, ca. 1721–28

Etching

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland

Early in his career, Boucher was hired by Jean de Jullienne to take part in an ambitious project to publish the drawings of Antoine Watteau. Boucher etched more than one hundred of Watteau’s chalk studies, an intimate experience that no doubt left an imprint on his own graphic manner. Of Boucher’s contribution to the project, Pierre Jean Mariette, one of the century’s greatest collectors and connoisseurs, would later write, “His light and spirited needle seemed made for this work.”

Cat. no. 9

Illustrate fig.13 from catalogue:

Antoine Watteau (1684–1721). Woman on a Swing, Viewed from Behind. Red and black chalk over graphite. Private collection.

Jean Honoré Fragonard

French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris After François Boucher

French, Paris 1703–1770 Paris

An Angel Bringing Food to Elijah, or Hermit Saint in the Desert, ca. 1752–56 Etching

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1949 (49.36.8)

Having benefited in his youth from making etchings after the drawings of Watteau, Boucher would later encourage his own students to give printmaking a try. Fragonard made his first etching as a young student in Boucher’s studio. In this freely worked plate, Fragonard suggests the drawing style of his master, evident in both the reinforced contours of the figures and the feathery touches in the angel’s wings and the palm tree. One also detects an echo of the graphic mannerisms of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, a seventeenth-century Genoese artist admired by Boucher and many of his students.

Cat. no. 10

Jean Honoré Fragonard

French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris

Monsieur Fanfan, 1778 Etching, third state of three

Collection of David P. Tunick Marguerite Gérard

French, Grasse 1761–1837 Paris After Jean Honoré Fragonard

French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris

Monsieur Fanfan, 1778 Etching

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Laurence Eyre, 1958

In 1778, Fragonard, a successful painter at the height of his career, embarked on an intense but brief campaign of printmaking with the aim of instructing Marguerite Gérard, his teenage sister-in-law, in the technique of etching. In this pair of prints, we see them each making an etching based on the same brush-and-wash drawing by Fragonard. While the compositions are identical, their graphic styles diverge dramatically. Fragonard’s plate is an inventive web of serpentine and wiggly lines, suggesting a cherubic boy with curly locks emerging from deep shadows. Gérard’s version employs variously oriented and overlapping hatching marks to indicate the placement of brush marks and the range of tones in the wash drawing that served as her model.

Cat. nos. 15, 16

Jean Honoré Fragonard

French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris

The Armoire, 1778

Etching, second state of four

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of Mrs. Lydia Evans Tunnard, in memory of W. G. Russell Allen A tour de force of his etching technique, The Armoire was also Fragonard’s final print, the culmination of his yearlong exploration of etching with his young sister-in-law, Marguerite Gérard. It showcases the varied and inventive mark making he put to use in describing this comical scene in which the angry parents of a disgraced young woman discover her lover hiding in an armoire.

Cat. no. 17

Marguerite Gérard French, Grasse 1761–1837 Paris

After Jean Honoré Fragonard

French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris

The Genius of Franklin, 1778

Etching printed in brown ink, first state of two

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of William H. Huntington, 1883 (83.2.230)

Gérard’s last print showcases her mastery of the etching technique, achieved in less than a year’s time. An allegory celebrating Benjamin Franklin’s visit to Paris, it is based on a wash drawing by Fragonard. Her bold method, which involved exposing the copper plate to acid several times to achieve the darkest shadows, effectively conveys the fluid confidence of Fragonard’s handling of brown wash. Cat. no. 18

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin

French, Paris 1724–1780 Paris

Allegory of the Marriages Performed by the City of Paris in Honor of the Birth of the Duc de Bourgogne in 1751, 1751

Etching, first state of three

The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection

One of the eighteenth century’s quirkier artists, Saint-Aubin was an indefatigable draftsman who took readily to etching, using the etching needle as fluidly as any other drawing tool. In this dense allegorical confection, he aims to flatter the monarchy by commemorating King Louis XV’s generous offer, upon the birth of his grandson in 1751, to pay the dowries of six hundred young women.

Cat. no. 36

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin French, Paris 1724–1780 Paris

View of the Salon of 1753, 1753

Etching and drypoint, fourth state of five

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wrightsman Fund, 2006 (2006.84)

This print is a rare depiction of one of the biennial exhibitions of contemporary art mounted in the Louvre’s Salon Carré. Saint-Aubin captures the high pitch of anticipation as visitors from various swathes of Parisian society mount the stairwell and emerge into the light-filled gallery overlooking the Seine. Although he was never made a member of the

Académie Royale, and thus was not permitted to exhibit at their Salons, Saint-Aubin created the most enduring images of this public event, as interested in the mix of viewers as in the display itself.

Cat. no. 37

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin

French, Paris 1724–1780 Paris

The Four Vases, 1754

Etching and drypoint, first state of two

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Massar Gift and The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1988 (1988.1021)

In this virtuoso display of invention, Saint-Aubin conjures four designs for vases in which the liveliness of their figural ornament belies their inanimate nature. His comfort with the etching needle is fully evident in this plate, where the handling is as loose and free as if it were drawn in pen and ink.

Cat. no. 38

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin

French, Paris 1724–1780 Paris

The Spectacle of the Tuileries: The Watering Cart and The Chairs, 1760–63

Etching and drypoint, second state of two

The Art Institute of Chicago, Robert Alexander Waller Fund

In this rare early proof, a pair of views of the Tuileries Gardens are printed together, before the plate was cut in two. Beneath, and oblivious to, the towering marble statues evoking tales from classical antiquity, Parisian revelers enjoy the amenities of this popular public park. Saint-Aubin used drypoint (scratching directly into the copper plate with a sharp tool) to create the velvety black shadows in the foliage, suggesting the welcome respite provided by nature on a hot day. Cat. no. 39

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin

French, Paris 1724–1780 Paris

Design for Trade Card for Périer, Ironmonger, 1767

Black chalk, pen and black and brown inks, brush and gray and brown wash; verso covered with red chalk

Private collection

Trade Card for Périer, Ironmonger, 1767 Etching and drypoint, third state of three

Private collection

Saint-Aubin’s drawing and the etched trade card for which it served as a model here hang together. Trade cards were given out by businesses in the eighteenth century, their function lying somewhere between an advertisement and a modern business card. Commissioned by the ironmonger Augustin Charles Périer, Saint-Aubin’s trade card presents a cutaway view of Périer’s shop in Paris. A seated customer animatedly discusses a lock with a salesgirl amid a picturesque jumble of various wrought-iron goods for sale.

Cat. nos. 40, 42

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin

French, Paris 1724–1780 Paris

Trade Card for Périer, Ironmonger, 1767

Etching and drypoint, first state of three, reworked with pen and brown ink

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1979 (1979.650) In this proof impression of his Trade Card for Périer, hanging just to the left, Saint-Aubin used pen and ink to indicate where he wanted to further etch the plate, mostly in the hanging drapery. Drapery panels were a conceit used often in trade cards to create a field for lettering. Since there are no known impressions of this print with lettering in this area, we can assume Saint-Aubin never completed the card.

Cat. no. 41

Jean-Baptiste Le Prince French, Metz 1734–1781 Saint-Denis-du-Port

Two plates from“Suite de divers habillements des peuples du nord” (Suite of Various

Costumes of the People of the North): Woman of the People (title plate) and The Young Shepherdess (plate 2), 1765

Etching

The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection

Le Prince was a student of François Boucher and mastered his pastoral idiom. To this foundation he added a gloss of picturesque details gleaned from an extended sojourn in Russia (1757–63). He was able to milk this particular vein of exoticism, much in the tradition of Boucher’s chinoiserie, for years after his return to France. He publicized his unusual specialty as a painter of russerie through etchings such as these, which draw on the tradition of costume prints.

Cat. nos. 47, 48

Jean-Baptiste Le Prince

French, Metz 1734–1781 Saint-Denis-du-Port

O farmers, happy beyond measure, could they but know their blessings, 1768

Aquatint and etching printed in brown ink, fourth state of four

The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection

In 1769, Le Prince exhibited twenty-nine etching and aquatints at the biennial Salon, thereby trumpeting his closely guarded invention of a technique that allowed him to approximate the look of pen-and-wash drawings. In this, his largest print, he recast, with a few adjustments, a typical pastoral landscape into a scene from Virgil’s Georgics.

Cat. no. 49

Jean-Baptiste Le Prince

French, Metz 1734–1781 Saint-Denis-du-Port

The Fishermen, 1771

Etching and aquatint printed in brown ink

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund

Many of the early impressions of Le Prince’s aquatints were printed in sepia-colored ink to suggest the tonality of brown wash, a common drawing medium. His technique of brushing the solvent onto the plate was so similar to making a drawing that works such as this one fully convey the fluidity and spontaneity of his technique as a draftsman. This view of fishermen in a boat is typical for Le Prince in its insertion of picturesque Russian- inflected details within an airy Rococo composition built around sweeping arabesque curves. Cat. no. 50 Jean-Baptiste Le Prince

French, Metz 1734–1781 Saint-Denis-du-Port

The Repose, 1771

Etching and aquatint printed in brown ink, second state of two

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Phyllis D. Massar Gift, 2011 (2011.280)

Le Prince’s mastery of the aquatint technique, which allowed him to create carefully controlled areas of tone ranging from light gold to deep sepia, is highlighted in this eroticized genre scene, in which the milky pale flesh of a slumbering young woman, her basket of eggs carelessly dropped on the ground, is in sharp contrast to the shadowy figures of her elderly parents in the background.

Cat. no. 51

Louis Jean Desprez French, Auxerre 1743–1804 Stockholm

The Chimera (La Chimère de Monsieur Desprez), before 1771

Etching, second or third state of five

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, 1998 (1998.248)

As a young student of architecture, Desprez made a number of prints after his

(unexecuted) architectural designs, but he also used etching to trumpet his inventiveness in other areas. This image of a mythical three-headed beast devouring its victim at the mouth of a tunnel is a stunning example of his capacity to explore the darker and more fantastic realms of the human imagination.

Cat. no. 52

Louis Jean Desprez

French, Auxerre 1743–1804 Stockholm

Antoine de Chésie, ca. 1772–76

Etching

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Everett V. Meeks, B.A. 1901, Fund

This profile portrait of the engineer Antoine de Chésie, made in Paris just before Desprez left to study in Italy, is a closely observed and sober portrayal set within an illusionistic oval frame. It is ornamented only by the precisely rendered tools of Chésie’s trade, artfully arrayed on the stone plinth below.

Cat. no. 53

Louis Jean Desprez

French, Auxerre 1743–1804 Stockholm

Tomb with Death Seated, ca. 1779–84

Etching and aquatint printed in brown ink, second state of two

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Janet Lee Kadesky Ruttenberg Fund, in honor of Colta Ives, 2012 (2012.189)

Once in Italy, Desprez was caught up in the antiquarian fever that prized his particular combination of skills: an ability to render precisely architectural forms and a gift for conjuring terrible or cataclysmic events of the past. Visits to ancient ruins may have stimulated his series of four tombs, large sepulchral fantasies executed in a grainy aquatint that lends them a timeworn patina. In this image from the series, a skeleton adorned like a king or pharaoh guards a tomb inscribed with pseudo-hieroglyphics. Cat. no. 54

Louis Jean Desprez

French, Auxerre 1743–1804 Stockholm

The Capture and Burning of Selinus by Hannibal, ca. 1779–84

Etching, aquatint, and drypoint, second state of three

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Hill-Stone Inc., 2002 (2002.155.1)

In his most ambitious print, Desprez here depicts the sack of Selinus (present-day

Selinunte), a Greek city on the coast of Sicily, by the Carthaginians in 409 B.C. Buildings burn against the night sky, the flames casting a dramatic light on the surface of the sea.

Desprez had made drawings on his visit to the city in August 1778, but it was only through the tonal range and painterly effects of aquatint that he was able to convey fully the fierce fighting and the magnitude of destruction.

Cat. no. 55

Jean Étienne Liotard

Swiss, Geneva 1702–1789 Geneva

Self-Portrait, ca. 1731

Etching, second state of three

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Janet Lee Kadesky Ruttenberg Fund, in honor of Colta Ives, 2009 (2009.229)

After his early training in Geneva, Liotard came to Paris to apprentice in the studio of

Jean-Baptiste Massé, a professional printmaker, but unlike his twin brother decided not to pursue printmaking as his specialty. He eventually gained fame throughout Europe as a portraitist in pastel, but his remarkable ability to seize a likeness is evident even in this very early etching, which has every appearance of being drawn directly on the plate as the young artist studied his features in a mirror.

Cat. no. 56

Jean Étienne Liotard

Swiss, Geneva 1702–1789 Geneva

The Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria, ca. 1778–81

Mezzotint, roulette, engraving, and drypoint

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Fund in memory of Horatio Greenough Curtis

Beginning about 1778, after a successful career spent traveling and making portraits in many European courts and capitals, as well as in his native city of Geneva, Liotard embarked on a second campaign of printmaking. Unlike the straightforward etchings of his youth, these are technically experimental tours de force, perhaps influenced by English mezzotints but ultimately without parallel. This print, based on a chalk drawing he had made decades earlier in Vienna of one of the daughters of Empress Maria Theresa, should perhaps be considered unfinished, as it is known only through a single impression and the band across the lower margin lacks lettering.

Cat. no. 57

Jean Étienne Liotard

Swiss, Geneva 1702–1789 Geneva

Self-Portrait, ca. 1778–81

Mezzotint, roulette, and etching

Collection of David P. Tunick This is one of seven prints Liotard made to accompany his 1781 treatise on the principles and rules of painting. Using an innovative combination of techniques, he presents his own self-portrait as a demonstration of the proper way to modulate light and dark to depict form.

Cat. no. 58

[GALLERY TWO ]

Pierre Moreau

French, 1715/20–1762 Paris

Clockwise from upper left: View of a Funerary Monument (Exhumation); View Outside a Temple (Funerary Preparations); View of a Port (Removal of the Body to a Ship); View

Inside a Temple (Transfer of the Body), ca. 1760

Etchings

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1953 (53.523.62(1–4))

Like many French artists living in Rome in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, architect Pierre Moreau fell under the sway of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the Venetian architect-turned-printmaker whose studio in Rome was just across the street from the

Académie de France. These four prints, whose narrative seems to revolve around a funeral and burial, all show a debt to Piranesi in their imaginative reuse of antique motifs.

Although made in Rome, such works found a ready market in Paris, as announcements in contemporary journals attest.

Cat. nos. 19–22

Jean-Baptiste Oudry

French, Paris 1686–1755 Beauvais

Return from the Hunt with a Dead Roe, title page from the “Hunt” series, 1725 (printed

1736)

Etching with drypoint and some engraving

The most successful animal painter during the reign of Louis XV, Oudry was, in the 1720s, establishing a specialty in hunt scenes. At this early stage of his career, etchings would have helped spread his fame, which was based on a particularly successful combination of naturalism and Rococo decorative principles (elegance and arabesque compositions among them). In addition to providing publicity, this beautifully executed print would have earned income for the artist, although after eleven years of selling impressions himself, Oudry sold the plate to publisher Gabriel Huquier, whose address replaced Oudry’s on the stone block at lower left.

Cat. no. 23

Pierre Peyron

French, Aix-en-Provence 1744–1814 Paris

Death of Socrates, 1790

Etching with roulette and stipple

The Baltimore Museum of Art, Garrett Collection Peyron was one of the few artists to make etchings after his own compositions following the French Revolution. The Death of Socrates reproduces, in reverse, a painting by Peyron that had been exhibited at the Salon of 1789 alongside Jacques Louis David’s canvas of the same subject (now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art). Peyron’s etching was commissioned by the Société des Amis des Arts, an organization founded by architect Charles de Wailly in 1789; their emblem appears in the lower margin, below the image.

Cat. no. 24

Charles François Hutin

French, Paris 1715–1776 Dresden

Design for a Fountain, 1758(?) Etching, third state of three

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Phyllis Massar, 2011 (2012.136.368)

Hutin began his career by studying painting but switched his specialty to sculpture. From

1748 until his death, he lived in Dresden, where he was employed at the Saxon court and was made director of the Dresden Academy. This print was part of a group of whimsical fountain designs that combined dramatic rock formations and mythological figures. Such recueils, or collections, would have kept his reputation alive back in France. Cat. no. 25

Claude Gillot

French, Langres 1673–1722 Paris

Two etchings from the “Festivals”series: Festival of Bacchus, Celebrated by Satyrs and

Bacchantes, and Festival of Faunus, God of the Forest, before 1728

Etching with some engraving

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Bequest of William Perkins Babcock Gillot, a painter and draftsman who focused on theatrical and bacchanalian subjects, created this pair of etchings as part of a set of four that use friezelike compositions and verdant backdrops to present celebrations of pagan gods relating to the woodland. The verses added below by the publisher recall the divertissements, or brief musical interludes, featured between acts in eighteenth-century theatrical productions.

Cat. nos. 28, 29

Joseph Fratrel French, Épinal 1730–1783 Mannheim

The Arts and Sciences Honoring Their Protector Charles Theodore, Count Palatine, 1777

Etching with drypoint, first state of two

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Georgiana W. Sargent, in memory of John Osborne Sargent, 1924 (24.63.1116(6))

One of many French-born artists who made their careers in the service of foreign courts, Fratrel created this richly textured etching after a grisaille (black-and-white monochrome) painting he had made four years earlier. The dense and inventive allegorical scene honors his patron, Charles Theodore, Count Palatine, whose features are depicted in profile at center. Cat. no. 30

Baron Dominique Vivant Denon

French, Givry 1747–1825 Paris

After Jacques Louis David

French, Paris 1748–1825 Brussels

Judge, 1794 Etching on pale green paper

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of an anonymous donor, 1999 An aristocrat by birth, Denon had many careers that ranged from collector and printmaker to diplomat and museum director. This etching of a design for a civil costume is based on a drawing by Jacques Louis David, part of a larger project approved by the government to supply new attire for public servants following the overthrow of the French monarchy.

Cat. no. 31

Baron Dominique Vivant Denon French, Givry 1747–1825 Paris

After Jacques Louis David

French, Paris 1748–1825 Brussels

Municipal Officer with a Sash, 1794

Etching on pale blue-green paper

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Dean Walker, 1999

An aristocrat by birth, Denon had many careers that ranged from collector and printmaker to diplomat and museum director. This etching of a design for a civil costume is based on a drawing by Jacques Louis David, part of a larger project approved by the government to supply new attire for public servants following the overthrow of the French monarchy.

Cat. no. 32

Charles Thévenin

French, Paris 1764–1838 Paris

The Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, 1790 Etching, first state of two

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Bequest of W. Gedney Beatty, by exchange, 2008 (2008.592)

This etching represents the Storming of the Bastille, a key event of the French Revolution that Thévenin claimed to have witnessed. For a novice, he displays incredible technical virtuosity. Touches of stark white stand out against inky zones of shadow in a dramatic composition full of movement, smoke, and violence. In this, the only print Thévenin ever made, the young artist had his first great success; he actively promoted the sale of impressions and even made a painting based on the print.

Cat. no. 33

Charles Germain de Saint-Aubin

French, Paris 1721–1786 Paris

The Dressing Table (La Toilette), from “Essai de papilloneries humaines” (Ideas for Scenes with Butterflies Masquerading as Humans), 1748

Etching, first state of two

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund and Rogers Fund, 1982 (1982.1101.6)

Charles Germain de Saint-Aubin, elder brother of Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, was an embroidery designer to the king. His sharp wit found other outlets for expression, such as his series of etchings depicting butterflies engaged in decidedly human activities.

Coming from an embroidery designer, the conceit was a humorous one: like the aristocrats who wore the luxurious fabrics of his design, these creatures are remarkable mainly for the extravagant ornament decorating their wings. Cat. no. 35

René Michel (called Michel-Ange) Slodtz

French, Paris 1705–1764 Paris

Figure and Head Studies, ca. 1732–36

Etching

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Janet Ruttenberg Gift, 2005 (2005.156)

This is the only known print by Slodtz, a young sculptor who was also a talented draftsman. Indeed, this composition, which pieces together different studies of draped figures, evokes in whimsical fashion the group sketching sessions required of students at the Académie de France.

Cat. no. 59

Pierre Charles Trémolières

French, Cholet 1703–1739 Paris

The Baptism, ca. 1734

Etching

Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Archer M. Huntington Museum Fund, 2000

As a student at the Académie de France in Rome, Trémolières was hired by Cardinal

Alessandro Albani to paint copies of Giuseppe Maria Crespi’s Seven Sacraments. Thus inspired, he decided to create a set of his own, first in drawings, then in prints, although he only seems to have finished two etchings before he returned to Paris. His modeling technique, which used uneven parallel lines, often following the direction of the forms, was similar to that of other French students making prints in Rome at the time, and may well have been influenced by Italian peintre-graveur traditions. Cat. no. 60 Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre

French, Paris 1714–1789 Paris

The Chinese Masquerade, 1735

Etching

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1953 (53.600.4449)

This accomplished and sparkling print commemorates an event that took place shortly before Pierre’s arrival in the Eternal City, when French students took part in the festivities marking the pre-Lenten celebration of Carnival. With pomp and whimsy in equal measure, the students dressed up as Chinese dignitaries and joined the procession along the Corso, passing in front of the Palazzo Mancini, the grand and centrally located quarters of the Académie de France.

Cat. no. 61

Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre

French, Paris 1714–1789 Paris

Country Dance, ca. 1735–40

Etching, proof state

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1949 (49.50.249)

Like many French artists of the period, Pierre was attracted to Italian scenes of rustic pastoral life set amid ancient ruins. Whether witnessed or invented, such scenes conformed to French Rococo taste. In this print, which is based on a painting Pierre made for a fellow student (see ill.), he improvised directly on the plate, altering and adding a great many figures, despite the smaller format.

Cat. no. 62

Illustrate fig.46 from catalogue:

Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre (1714–1789). The Country Dance, ca. 1735–40. Oil on canvas. Whereabouts unknown

Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre

French, Paris 1714–1789 Paris

Adoration of the Shepherds (Shepherd with a Bagpipe?), ca. 1740

Etching

This rarely seen print was catalogued as an Adoration of the Shepherds in 1859 by Prosper de Baudicour, a collector and author of reference books on prints. However, the prominent figure of the bagpipe player, together with the absence of sheep, suggests that the subject may have been intended simply as a scene of Roman street life. Indeed, a pleasing ambiguity between religious iconography and scenes of everyday life marked much private religious art of the period.

Cat. no. 63

Pierre Hubert Subleyras

French, Saint-Gilles-du-Gard 1699–1749 Rome

The Banquet in the House of Simon the Pharisee, 1738

Etching printed in red-brown ink, fourth state of five

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Bequest of Anthony Morris Clark, 1978

After completing seven years of study at the Académie de France in Rome, Subleyras decided to marry and remain in Italy, where he led a successful career, receiving many religious and portrait commissions. He looked to etching as a way to replicate certain of his works, perhaps with the aim of making his achievements known back in France. This ambitious print relates to his commission from the Order of Saint John Lateran for the refectory of their monastery at Asti. Typically printed in black ink, this particular impression is printed in a shade of red meant to evoke the color of sanguine, a red chalk drawing material.

Cat. no. 64

Joseph Marie Vien French, Montpellier 1716–1809 Paris

After Jean François de Troy

French, Paris 1679–1752 Rome

Lot and His Daughters, 1748

Etching

The Art Institute of Chicago, Suzanne Lord Folds Memorial Endowment

A highly successful painter of history subjects and large-scale decorative works, Jean

François de Troy arrived in Rome in 1738 to take charge of the Académie de France. Aged fifty-nine, he was still a prolific painter and, although inexperienced in the technique, he encouraged the activity of etching within the walls of the Académie, in part to publicize his continued output. Vien, a young student of painting, seamlessly translated his talent as a draftsman into this new medium. Here, he etched de Troy’s painting Lot and His

Daughters, a challenging subject that involved the depiction of partially clad figures in a dark grotto setting.

Cat. no. 65

Joseph Marie Vien

French, Montpellier 1716–1809 Paris

Lot and His Daughters, 1748 Etching

The Art Institute of Chicago, Suzanne Lord Folds Endowment

Made the same year as his etching after his teacher Jean François de Troy’s Lot and His

Daughters (hanging to the left) is Vien’s print after his own version of the subject.

Together the pair form a playful homage to and exercise in connoisseurship. In addition to the different figure types characteristic of each artist, one can also distinguish their techniques—the smooth surfaces preferred by de Troy and the contrasts of light and dark favored by Vien.

Cat. no. 66

Joseph Marie Vien

French, Montpellier 1716–1809 Paris

Four plates from the series “Caravanne du Sultan à la Mecque” (Caravan of the Sultan to

Mecca): The Chief of the Indians (plate 8); The Priest of the Law (plate 9); The Sultan (plate 17); and The Black Sultana (plate 28), 1748

Etching

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Museum purchase through gift of Eleanor G. Hewitt

These four plates are from a set of thirty-two made by Vien to celebrate his fellow students’ contribution to the Roman Carnival procession of 1748. Under the conceit of

“The Caravan of the Sultan to Mecca,” they created exotic costumes of faux luxury materials and then made drawings of each other. Vien went on to etch his set of drawings, showcasing his skill at wielding the etching needle to produce rich tactile effects. The set was well received in Paris, thereby creating positive publicity for the activities of the academy and its pensionnaires (students), an enterprise funded by the royal purse.

Cat. no. 67a–d

Louis Joseph Le Lorrain French, Paris 1715–1759 St. Petersburg

Project for the Chinea of 1744: The Glorification of Virgil, 1744

Etching

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Harvey D. Parker Collection (P14546)

Louis Joseph Le Lorrain

French, Paris 1715–1759 St. Petersburg

Project for the Chinea of 1744: The Glorification of Virgil, 1744

Etching

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Harvey D. Parker Collection (P14546) Project for the Chinea of 1748: Strength Generates Strength, 1748

Etching

Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

In the 1730s and 1740s, a number of French art students were commissioned to take part in the festival of the Chinea, in which the kingdom of Naples paid homage to the papacy with a procession led by a chinea, or white hackney. Artists devised temporary structures from which fireworks would be set off, and they recorded these ephemeral designs as etchings. Those of Louis Joseph Le Lorrain were particularly striking. His earliest projects, like the one on the left for the procession of 1744, were primarily figurative, while his later ones, like the one for 1748, hanging to the right, made greater use of imaginary architectural structures, demonstrating the influence of the architectural visionary

Giovanni Battista Piranesi on this generation of French artists. Cat. nos. 68, 69

François Hutin French, ca. 1685–1758 Paris

Visiting Prisoners, from the Seven Acts of Mercy, 1740–60

Etching, second state of two

Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, The Leo Steinberg Collection, 2002

An unusual case, Hutin was a sculptor who accompanied his son, Charles François, to

Rome and would then be named a pensionnaire (student) himself. During the seven years

Hutin spent in Italy, he made a number of Chinea prints as well as a series of etchings depicting The Seven Acts of Mercy. This plate, illustrating the act of visiting prisoners, showcases Hutin’s sinuous figure types and elegant manner of etching.

Cat. no. 70 Ennemond Alexandre Petitot

French, Lyon 1727–1801 Parma

Elevation in Perspective of a Column Intended as the Tomb for a Queen, 1746–50

Etching

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Adrian T. Eeles Gift, 2010 (2010.257)

Many architects used etching to promote their talents before any of their designs for buildings were ever realized. Petitot’s six etchings, made while he was a student in Rome, demonstrate the pervasive influence of the Venetian-born printmaker Giovanni Battista

Piranesi, whose architectural vision spurred the imagination of many young French artists.

Cat. no. 71 Jean Barbault

French, Viarmes 1718–1762 Rome

The Excavation of the Obelisk from the Campo Marzo, 1748 Etching

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1962 (62.661.36)

For French artists living in Rome beyond the walls of the Académie de France, etching could be an effective means of earning a living. Barbault’s prints featured both ancient and modern Rome—and sometimes, as in this case, a conflation of the two. Here, he details the work of engineers as they excavate an Egyptian obelisk from the Campo Marzo.

Cat. no. 72

Joseph Vernet

French, Avignon 1714–1789 Paris

Return from Fishing, before 1752

Etching

Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Ethel Morrison Van Derlip Fund

This is one of only two known prints by Vernet. A highly successful landscape painter, he was capable of topographical exactitude but also shared the contemporary taste for the rugged and untamed landscapes associated with the seventeenth-century Neapolitan artist

Salvator Rosa. Here, his bold and springy lines suggest the brio of Rosa’s graphic manner.

Cat. no. 73

Hubert Robert

French, Paris 1733–1808 Paris

“Les Soirées de Rome,” ca. 1763–65

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1929 (29.55.1–10)

a. Title page Etching, first state of three b. The Bust

Etching, second state of four c. The Statue Before the Ruins

Etching, second state of four d. The Stairs by the Four Posts Etching, second state of four e. The Ancient Temple

Etching, second state of four f. The Sarcophagus

Etching, second state of four g. The Well

Etching, second state of four h. The Triumphal Arch Etching, second state of four i. The Pulley

Etching, second state of four j. The Ancient Gallery*

Etching, second state of four

* Based on an inscription on the first state of this print (cat. no. 75), this plate was etched by either Louis Dominique Honoré Digne or his wife, Barbe Sophie, after Hubert Robert.

The arrival in Rome in 1763 of Claude Henri Watelet and his mistress Marguerite Le

Comte, both amateur etchers, set off a spate of printmaking activity around the Académie de France. In their honor, Hubert Robert, a young painter of ruins and landscapes, made a suite of prints suggesting the antiquarian diversions the group must have enjoyed together.

Dedicated to Madame Le Comte, the set originally was printed in small numbers for a select audience, but following Robert’s return to Paris, the plates were acquired by Johann Georg Wille, a publisher who reinforced and expanded the series for wider distribution.

Cat. no. 74a–j

Louis Dominique Honoré Digne (or his wife, Barbe Sophie) French, 1735–1792

After, and possibly with the assistance of, Hubert Robert

French, Paris 1733–1808 Paris

The Ancient Gallery, ca. 1763–64

Etching, first state of four

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Phyllis Massar, 2011 (2012.136.41.10)

The inscription on this rare—perhaps unique—early impression of The Ancient Gallery reveals a surprising fact: that the plate initially was etched, not by Robert, as long thought, but by either the French consul Louis Dominique Honoré Digne or his wife, Barbe Sophie.

This discovery offers further evidence of the close relationships between French artists and members of the privileged classes who wished to learn the art of etching.

Cat. no. 75

Charles Joseph Natoire French, Nimes 1700–1777 Castel Gandolfo

The Holy Family, ca. 1764

Etching, proof state

Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, The Leo Steinberg Collection, 2002

This print is based on a drawing that has been dated to 1760–65, suggesting that Natoire, director of the Académie de France, who had not made an etching for three decades, may have had his interest revived about 1763–64, inspired, like many of his students, by the arrival in Rome of Claude Henri Watelet and his entourage of etching enthusiasts.

Cat. no. 76

Simon Julien

French, Toulon 1735–1800 Paris

Sheet of Studies: Flora, Cupids, and Heads, 1764

Etching on light gray paper

Away from the commercialism of the Parisian print trade, a sense of lightheartedness governed the experimental plates etched by French students in Rome. Julien here used the etching needle to record quick sketches, presumably after works of art he saw in the city, although many remain to be identified.

Cat. no. 77

Jean Jacques Lagrenée

French, Paris 1739–1821 Paris

Fragments of Antiquity, 1765

Etching

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1977 (1977.616.1) Although Lagrenée had made more conventional prints before arriving in Rome, he was inspired, perhaps by the informal atmosphere of the Palazzo Mancini and the proximity of Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s studio, to make two plates covered in sketches of antique fragments.

Cat. no. 78

Jean Bernard Restout

French, Paris 1732–1797 Paris

Saint Bruno, 1764

Etching, second state of two

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Phyllis D. Massar Gift, 2009 (2009.275)

When a French art student received a commission from a Roman patron, etching offered the opportunity to create a record of his work that could be seen by French audiences. To reproduce his Saint Bruno, painted in Rome for Dom André Le Masson, Restout created this atmospheric etching. The extensive cross-hatching, which involved multiple bitings of the plate, produced a sufficiently dark background to set off the illuminated figure of the kneeling saint.

Cat. no. 79

[GALLERY 3]

Louis Carrogis, called Carmontelle

French, Paris 1717–1806 Paris

Louis Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, and His Son Louis Philippe Joseph, Duc de Chartres, 1759

Etching The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1996 (1996.275)

The connection between artistic pursuits and the sociability of the privileged classes is nowhere more explicit than in the work of Carmontelle, who spent much of his career attached to the household of the duc d’Orléans, tutoring his son, designing gardens, and staging plays. But he is best remembered for his watercolor portraits of the society figures and many others who passed through the ducal court. Only a few were translated into etching, of which this intimate double portrait of the duc d’Orléans and his son is the most elaborate.

Cat. no. 80

Claude Henri Watelet

French, Paris 1718–1786 Paris Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre

French, Paris 1714–1789 Paris

Studies of Heads, ca. 1756 Etching

Watelet befriended the painter Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre on his first trip to Italy. Their friendship and collaboration continued back in France, often revolving around printmaking. Here, the caption declares that Pierre and Watelet etched this plate together in a single day at Moulin Joli, Watelet’s rustic retreat just outside Paris.

Cat. no. 81

Claude Henri Watelet

French, Paris 1718–1786 Paris

The House of Marguerite Le Comte, ca. 1765

Etching

Collection of John W. Ittmann

This delicate landscape depicts the Moulin Joli (literally, the “Pretty Mill”), referred to in the caption as the “House of Marguerite,” after Marguerite Le Comte, Watelet’s mistress and fellow amateur printmaker. The bucolic retreat just outside Paris became a fashionable gathering place, attracting artists and amateurs who engaged in drawing and etching as sociable leisure-time activities.

Cat. no. 82

Ange-Laurent de La Live de Jully Paris 1725–1770 Paris

After Jacques François Joseph Saly

French, Valenciennes 1717–1776 Paris

Four plates from “Recueil de caricatures” (Collection of Caricatures), ca. 1754

Clockwise from top left: An Artist at the Académie de France in Rome(?) (plate 1); An

Artist at the Académie de France in Rome(?) (plate 5); Nicolas Bremont, Cook at the Académie de France in Rome (plate 14); and Jean François de Troy, Director of the

Académie de France in Rome (plate 8) Etchings

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Everett V. Meeks, B.A. 1901, Fund

Perhaps influenced by Italian caricaturist Pier Leone Ghezzi, Saly made a set of caricatures in red chalk while he was a sculpture student at the Académie de France, poking fun at the full spectrum of residents of the Palazzo Mancini, from the director to the cook. About a decade later, La Live de Jully, a wealthy collector who had never visited Italy, borrowed and made a set of etchings after Saly’s drawings. He was given the title associé-libre (free associate) at the Académie Royale in 1754, and the prints may have been a way to signal his association with this august body, its members, and its satellite school in Rome.

Cat. no. 83

Étienne de Lavallée-Poussin

French, Rouen 1733–1793 Paris

Marguerite Le Comte, 1764

Black chalk, pen and brown ink, brush and brown and gray wash

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, PECO Foundation Gift, 2013 (2013.181)

This recently discovered drawing by Étienne de Lavallée-Poussin, a pensionnaire at the

Académie de France, depicts Marguerite Le Comte seated at a table. She was the mistress of Claude Henri Watelet and, like him, an amateur printmaker. Lavallée-Poussin had already been acquainted with the couple in Paris, having studied with Jean-Baptiste Marie

Pierre, whom Watelet had befriended on his first trip to Rome.

Cat. no. 85

Claude Henri Watelet

French, Paris 1718–1786 Paris After Étienne de Lavallée-Poussin

French, Rouen 1733–1793 Paris

Marguerite Le Comte, 1764 Etching, second state of three

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, A. Hyatt Mayor Purchase Fund, Marjorie Phelps Starr Bequest, 2012 (2012.384)

This rare proof state of Watelet’s etching after Lavallée-Poussin’s drawing, hanging adjacent, bears a clear signature that was lost when the plate was cut down to match the format of the other plates in Nella venuta (an example is on display in the nearby vitrine). As a result, subsequent scholars often misattributed the print. Comparison with the recently discovered drawing reveals that Watelet added to the composition details, such as the etching tools and the print unfurled over the table edge, that identify Le Comte as an amateur printmaker.

Cat. no. 86

Marguerite Le Comte

French, Paris 1717–1800 Paris

After Étienne de Lavallée-Poussin

French, Rouen 1733–1793 Paris

Cardinal Albani, 1764

Etching

Collection of John W. Ittmann Marguerite Le Comte etched this profile portrait of Cardinal Alessandro Albani after a drawing by Lavallée-Poussin. Her lover, Claude Henri Watelet, drew attention to her accomplishment by including a legible image of the print, unfurling over the edge of the table, in his etched portrait of Le Comte, hanging to the left.

Cat. no. 87

Anne Claude Philippe de Tubières, comte de Caylus

French, Paris 1692–1765 Paris After Edme Bouchardon

French, Chaumont 1698–1762 Paris

Retouched by Étienne Fessard French, Paris 1714–1777 Paris

Picture Seller, 1738

Etching with some engraving

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1953 (53.600.588(25))

An antiquarian, collector, and writer, Caylus made more than three thousand etchings, often as illustrations for his learned treatises, but also as collaborations with artists.

Between 1737 and 1746, he etched five suites of prints after Edme Bouchardon’s drawings of Parisian street criers. This print, the title plate of the third suite, depicts a merchant of images, perhaps an ambulatory print seller, who holds a large roll of paper.

Cat. no. 89

Claude Henri Watelet

French, Paris 1718–1786 Paris

After Jean-Baptiste Greuze French, Tournus 1725–1805 Paris

Self-Portrait as Jan Six, ca. 1762–65

Etching

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, William J. Collins Collection

The collecting and making of prints became completely intertwined in the work of

Watelet, who owned 674 prints by Rembrandt and his school as well as 81 of the artist’s original copper plates, some of which he retouched. This close knowledge of Rembrandt’s work inspired his 1785 Rymbranesques, trial prints in the style of the Dutch master. This shadowy self-portrait by an open window is a direct homage (by way of an intermediate work by Greuze) to Rembrandt’s portrait of his patron, Jan Six.

Cat. no. 91

Baron Dominique Vivant Denon French, Givry 1747–1825 Paris

After Rembrandt van Rijn

Dutch, Leiden 1606–1669 Amsterdam

Death of the Virgin, 1783

Etching

The Baltimore Museum of Art, Garrett Collection

Another amateur printmaker (in addition to being a diplomat and future museum director) who had a large collection of Rembrandt’s prints was Baron Vivant Denon. His large etched copy of Rembrandt’s Death of the Virgin is more rightly seen as an emulation or homage than as a copy or reproduction. Denon etched Rembrandt’s name and the original date of the print (1639) in one corner and “Dn 1783” in the other, asserting through the physical object of the print a relationship between the two artists.

Cat. no. 92

François Boucher

French, Paris 1703–1770 Paris After Abraham Bloemaert

Netherlandish, Gorinchem 1566–1651 Utrecht

Sheet of Sketches with a Woman Holding a Basket, and Sheet of Sketches with a Boy Lying on the Ground, ca. 1735

Etchings

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1949 (49.95.476(9), .476(5))

It was perhaps Boucher’s youthful employment etching Watteau’s figure drawings that gave him the idea of making a suite of prints after a group of chalk drawings by Bloemaert, which he had the opportunity to study in Rome. In these two examples from the set, he artfully recombines elements from different sheets into an elegant mix of scales and motifs, blending whole figures with fragments and more finished passages with quick sketches.

Cat. nos. 93, 94

Jean Pierre Norblin de la Gourdaine

French, Misy-Fault-Yonne 1745–1830 Paris

Self-Portrait with Etching Plate, ca. 1778

Etching, drypoint, and engraving The Art Institute of Chicago, John H. Wrenn Memorial Endowment

Norblin de la Gourdaine’s entire output of prints, numbering about 118, is an ode to the prints of Rembrandt in both style and subject matter. Here, he depicts himself as a printmaker, illuminated only by the diffuse light coming through the etcher’s scrim. The recurring motif in Rembrandt’s work of a figure in a dim interior lit only by a window served as Norblin de la Gourdaine’s inspiration.

Cat. no. 95

Jean Jacques de Boissieu French, Lyon 1736–1810 Lyon

Study of Thirteen Heads, ca. 1770

Etching, second state of three

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1967 (67.793.25)

Another aspect of the French admiration for Rembrandt can be seen in the popularity of the sketch plate, on which an etching needle could be used to draw independent sketches.

A format originally associated with the learning process and an artist’s initial forays into the medium, the sketch plate became, in the hands of Rembrandt and his eighteenth- century emulators, a vehicle for virtuosity.

Cat. no. 96

Jean Honoré Fragonard

French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris

After Johann Liss German, Oldenburg ca. 1595/1600–1631 Verona

Saint Jerome, ca. 1761–65

Etching, first state of three

The Art Institute of Chicago, Stanley Field Fund

Fragonard made more than three hundred black chalk sketches after works of art he saw on his leisurely return from Rome in the company of his patron, the abbé de Saint-Non.

Back in Paris, he made sixteen prints based on these drawings, and the selection reveals his attraction to Venetian painting. This etching is based on a canvas by Johann Liss in the church of San Nicolò da Tolentino in Venice (see ill.), but Fragonard could not resist tweaking the composition by turning the face of the angel in the sky to engage directly with the viewer.

Cat. no. 97

Caption for comp ill (fig.58 in exh cat):

Johann Liss (ca. 1595/1600–1631). Saint Jerome Inspired by an Angel, 1627. Oil on canvas. San Nicolò da Tolentino, Venice

Jean Honoré Fragonard

French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris

After Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Italian, Venice 1696–1770 Madrid

The Feast of Anthony and Cleopatra, ca. 1761–65

Etching, first state of two

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Rosenwald Collection Like the Saint Jerome hanging adjacent, this etching is based on a black chalk drawing

Fragonard made on his return trip from Rome in 1761. In this instance, however, the artist took even greater liberties with the work that served as his model, Giovanni

Battista Tiepolo’s Feast of Anthony and Cleopatra. He removed the balcony and musicians and replaced them with the figures of Pluto and Persephone, who appear in a different part of the frescoes at the Palazzo Labia, Venice (see ill.).

Cat. no. 98

Caption for comp ill (fig.59 in exh. cat.):

Elevation view of Tiepolo’s frescoes at Palazzo Labia, Venice

Jean Claude Richard, abbé de Saint-Non

French, Paris 1727–1791 Paris

After Jean Honoré Fragonard French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris

Two plates from “Fragments choisis, 3e suite” (Select Fragments, 3rd Suite): Cain Killing

Abel (plate 30) and Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (plate 29), 1772 Etching and aquatint

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Bequest of William Perkins Babcock

It was about a decade after his return journey from Italy that the abbé de Saint-Non’s project of etching his Recueil de griffonis (collection of sketches) got fully underway. To illustrate the many copies and sketches made in Italy by Fragonard, Hubert Robert, and others, he ultimately decided to employ the newly invented technique of aquatint. The rich and fluid results, often printed in brown ink, ironically, or perhaps amusingly, recall not the black chalk drawings that were their models but sepia drawings in pen and wash. Cat. nos. 99, 100

Jean Honoré Fragonard French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris

Nymph Supported by Two Satyrs, 1763

The Satyr’s Family, 1763

Nymph Astride a Satyr, 1763

The Satyrs’ Dance, 1763

Etchings

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Severance and Greta Millikin Trust

With Italy still fresh in his memory, Fragonard created this set of four prints featuring scenes of playful satyrs and nymphs in the form of abandoned, overgrown antique reliefs.

One of the eighteenth century’s most virtuoso displays of skill with the etching needle, the series evokes—and even surpasses—the much-admired example of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, who also nestled his scenes in lush, sun-dappled foliage.

Cat. nos. 101–104

Jean Jacques Lagrenée

French, Paris 1739–1821 Paris

Sacrifice to the God Pan, ca. 1760–63

Etching, first state of two

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Everett V. Meeks, B.A. 1901, Fund The earthy sensuality of the work of the Genoese painter and printmaker Giovanni

Benedetto Castiglione influenced many eighteenth-century French artists. His light and feathery handling of the etching needle and his celebration of the pagan past resonated especially with Jean Jacques Lagrenée, who made this very free etching while in St.

Petersburg with his elder brother.

Cat. no. 105

Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg French, Strasbourg 1740–1812 London

“Première suite des soldats” (First Suite of Soldiers), 1755–71

The Baltimore Museum of Art, Garrett Collection

a. Soldier Seated on a Rock with Shield (plate 1)

Etching, second state of three b. Soldier in Armor, Seen from Back, Resting on a Lance (plate 2) Etching, second state of three c. Savage Soldier, Swinging a Club (plate 3)

Etching, second state of three d. Soldier Standing, Resting on a Flag (plate 4)

Etching, second state of three e. Soldier with Lance, Holding out One Arm (plate 5)

Etching, second state of three f. Armed Warrior Standing over a Dead Soldier (plate 6)

Etching, second state of three Loutherbourg, an Alsatian painter who studied etching in Johann Georg Wille’s academy, clearly admired the prints of the seventeenth-century Neapolitan painter Salvator Rosa. As did other French printmakers of the time, Loutherbourg took up a format—a series of etchings of soldiers—associated with Rosa to showcase his own inventiveness and fluency.

Cat. no. 106a–f

Jean Denis Lempereur

French, Paris 1701–1779 Paris After Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (Il Grechetto)

Italian, Genoa 1609–1664 Mantua

Landscape with a March of Animals, 1742 Etching

The Baltimore Museum of Art, Garrett Collection

The admiration for Castiglione resonated with not only artists but amateurs, among them

Jean Denis Lempereur, a jeweler and collector. He owned a number of paintings and drawings by the Genoese master, including a bistre drawing of a March of Animals, of which this etching is a copy. Although the drawing has not been identified, Lempereur’s bold and calligraphic lines give us a sense of the original.

Cat. no. 107

Louis Germain

French, 1733–ca. 1791

Studies of Heads, 1773

Etching The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1969 (69.670.38)

Several trends, including the sketch-plate format and the appropriation of motifs from seventeenth-century Italian printmakers, are combined here to humorous effect by the little-known etcher Louis Germain. The screaming skeleton’s heads in the lower register are lifted from a series of prints of the figure of Death by Stefano della Bella (see ill.), while the upper register features heads from Loutherbourg’s homages to Salvator Rosa. The naively drawn heads of contemporary lovers that awkwardly negotiate the transition are perhaps the invention of Germain himself.

Cat. no. 108

Illustrate fig.64 from the catalogue:

Stefano della Bella (Italian, 1610–1664). Death Carrying off an Infant, ca. 1648. Etching. The British Museum, London

French, 18th century

Sketch Plate, ca. 1760–80 Etching

Although the author of this plate of quickly sketched studies has not been identified, the print shares many of the qualities of works hanging nearby: resting soldiers influenced by Salvator Rosa, or perhaps Giovanni Paolo Panini; a sketchy aesthetic; and the humorous juxtaposition of unrelated sketches.

Cat. no. 109

Joseph Marie Vien French, Montpellier 1716–1809 Paris

Arrival at the Wine Vat, ca. 1755

Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, incised; verso covered in red chalk

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Alain and Marie-Christine van den Broek d’Obrenan Gift, 2008 (2008.599)

Arrival at the Wine Vat, ca. 1755 Etching

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 2011 (2011.540)

Vien’s close friendship with the amateur the comte de Caylus strengthened following the artist’s return from Italy, with the exposure to Caylus’s antiquarian interests pushing

Vien’s art in a Neoclassical direction. In the 1750s, a marked preference for classical subjects and planar compositions emerged in his work, as seen in his series of five etchings celebrating Bacchus, the god of wine. One of these, Arrival at the Wine Vat, is here exhibited with its pen-and-wash preparatory drawing, its composition in reverse. The artist transferred the design to the copper plate by covering the verso of the drawing in red chalk and incising the outlines of the forms.

Cat. nos. 110, 111

François Boucher

French, Paris 1703–1770 Paris

The Laundress, 1756

Etching, first state of two

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1955 (55.503.31)

At the outset of his career, Boucher had found employment making etchings after the chalk drawings of Antoine Watteau. Three decades later, he continued to use the etching needle as a drawing tool, although the present composition is of his own design. His evocation of the rustic countryside as a type of pastoral, inhabited by pretty young women, influenced a generation of artists.

Cat. no. 43

Jean-Baptiste Le Prince French, Metz 1734–1781 Saint-Denis-du-Port

The Washerwomen, 1771

Etching and aquatint printed in brown ink

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 2010 (2010.543)

Le Prince, a student of François Boucher, was indebted to his master’s subject matter and style, and shared his commitment to etching. Le Prince was more technically experimental, however, and in 1768 began publishing prints that made use of the recently developed technique of aquatint, which allowed for effects that closely imitated the appearance of wash drawings. Cat. no. 44 Jean Honoré Fragonard

French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris

The Little Park, ca. 1763

Etching

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 2011 (2011.91)

Etching was a perfect medium for artists fond of echoes and iterations. For Fragonard,

The Little Park was a subject he returned to numerous times, a memory of an Italian garden reworked in various media, from chalk to wash, gouache to oil. His etched variant of the subject is the most delicate, but the vast and dreamlike space evoked by his wiggly lines and dashes belies the tiny scale of the plate. Cat. no. 11 Jean Claude Richard, abbé de Saint-Non

French, Paris 1727–1791 Paris

After Jean Honoré Fragonard French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris

The Little Park, ca. 1763–65

Etching, second state of two

The Baltimore Museum of Art

Saint-Non, an aristocratic collector, patron, and amateur, had befriended Fragonard in

Italy. The two continued to work together in Paris, often brought together by their shared interest in etching. Here, Saint-Non reprises Fragonard’s composition while imprinting it with his own style. He introduced a stronger sense of contrast by adding dark trees at left and right and by burnishing out the statue in the grotto, leaving a pale emptiness at the center. Cat. no. 12

Franz Edmund Weirotter

Austrian, Innsbruck 1733–1771 Vienna After Jean Honoré Fragonard

French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris

Terraced Garden at the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, ca. 1767 Etching, third state of three

Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Gift of John W. Ittmann

Weirotter, an Austrian artist specializing in landscapes, learned how to etch from Johann

Georg Wille in the French capital. In his rendition of Fragonard’s The Little Park, he transforms the composition into an oblong, focusing on the man-made elements of the garden and omitting the trees and sky.

Cat. no. 13

Louis Gabriel Moreau

French, Paris 1740–1806 Paris

Abandoned Park, ca. 1779

Etching on light blue laid paper, first state of two

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gift of Ivan E. Phillips

One still feels an echo of Fragonard’s The Little Park in Moreau’s Abandoned Park, made about fifteen years later. This impression is printed on a pale blue paper that accentuates the airy delicacy of the vertical composition.

Cat. no. 14

Jean-Baptiste Le Prince

French, Metz 1734–1781 Saint-Denis-du-Port

Design for title plate from “Varie vedute del gentile mulino” (Various Views of the

Genteel Mill), ca. 1755

Brush and brown and gray wash over black chalk

The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Leigh B. Block

Jean Claude Richard, abbé de Saint-Non French, Paris 1727–1791 Paris

After Jean-Baptiste Le Prince

French, Metz 1734–1781 Saint-Denis-du-Port

Title plate from “Varie vedute del gentile mulino” (Various Views of the Genteel Mill),

1755

Etching

Collection of John W. Ittmann

Le Prince’s exposure to etching would have been through his teacher, François Boucher, but also through the amateurs he encountered at Moulin Joli, Claude Henri Watelet’s artistic retreat outside the city of Paris. In 1755, the abbé de Saint-Non made a suite of etchings memorializing the rustic beauty of the surroundings. Exhibited together here are his title plate and the wash drawing by Le Prince that served as his model.

Cat. nos. 45, 46

CASE LABELS

One did not need to be a trained professional to pick up an etching needle and draw a design into the waxy varnish coating of a copper plate. The needle easily scraped away the ground, leaving lines of exposed metal that would then be corroded by acid, creating furrows that could hold ink. Laying a dampened piece of paper atop the inked plate and running the whole through a press would transfer the design to the paper. Treatises of the period offered instruction in the technique and often included illustrations of the necessary tools and equipment.

Antoine-Joseph Pernety, Dictionnaire portatif de peinture, sculpture et gravure (Paris:

Chez Bauche, 1757)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas J. Watson Library, Andrews Fund (100.4 P42) Plate 6 features illustrations of a press and various tools used in making etchings.

Not in catalogue

Abraham Bosse, De la manière de graver à l’eau forte et au burin, et de la gravure en manière noire avec la façon de construire les presses modernes & d’imprimer en taille- douce. Nouvelle édition, augmentée de l’impression qui imite les tableaux, de la gravûre en manière de crayon, & de celle qui imite le lavis. Enrichie de vignettes & de vingt-une planches en taille-douce (Paris: Chez Charles-Antoine Jombert, 1758)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Winthrop S. Gilman, 1921 (21.36.143)

Plate 20 depicts an inked plate and a sheet of paper being run through a press, while completed prints hang to dry on a line above.

Not in catalogue

Jacques François Joseph Saly French, Valenciennes 1717–1776 Paris

Design for a Vase with Two Mermaids, from the “Vases” series, 1746 Etching

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1954 (54.636.6)

Saly was a sculptor who, like many artists of the period, tried his hand at printmaking during his student years in Rome. There, he etched a set of thirty of his own designs for vases, which were first presented as a gift to Jean François de Troy, director of the

Académie de France, and later republished in Paris for wider sale and distribution. Here, two mermaids with fronds for hair rest wearily on the rim of an antique-inspired vase.

Cat. no. 27

Claude Gillot

French, Langres 1673–1722 Paris

The Fish and the Fireworks, from Antoine Houdar de La Motte’s “Fables nouvelles, dediées au roy,” 1719

Published by Gregoire Dupuis

Etching

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1934 (34.15)

Although he was not trained as a professional printmaker, Gillot found a strong market for his whimsical small-scale designs for book illustrations, which he often etched himself with remarkable fluidity. Here, he illustrates the opening lines of a fable by La Motte in which fireworks set off from a large structure illuminate the night sky.

Cat. no. 34

Jean Jacques Lagrenée

French, Paris 1739–1821 Paris

Two Figures in the Style of Red-Figure Vase Painting and The Holy Family with Angels, possibly from “Recueil de différentes compositions, frises et ornements dessinées et gravées

à la manière du lavis” (Collection of Different Compositions, Friezes, and Ornament Drawn and Etched in the Wash Manner), ca. 1784

Etching and aquatint, printed in color

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, The Arthur Ross Foundation Gift and Charles Z. Offin Fund, 1999 (1999.2(11–13))

A successful history painter from a family of artists, Lagrenée was exposed to antiquity while studying in Rome as a young man. Over the course of his career, and in tandem with the times, his style moved steadily toward Neoclassicism. Although he had made some etchings in his youth, he adopted aquatint in the mid-1780s. This collection of prints, all dating to around the time he was appointed artistic director at the Sèvres porcelain manufactory, is comprised mainly of ornamental compositions evocative of ancient vases and wall paintings, occasionally juxtaposed with compositions reminiscent of his earlier manner, which was influenced by François Boucher and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione.

Cat. no. 26

GALLERY 3

Pierre Jean Mariette

French, Paris 1694–1774 Paris

After Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Italian, Cento 1591–1666 Bologna

Landscape with Figures and a Distant Town (plate inserted in Catalogue raisonné des differens objets dans . . . le Cabinet de feu Mr. Mariette [Paris: Catalogue d’Estampes,

1775]) Etching

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1936 (36.501)

An expert in prints and drawings, Mariette was from a family of print dealers. A true amateur (he would be named amateur honoraire by the Académie Royale in 1767), he honed his own connoisseurship skills by drawing and etching copies of artworks in his collection. This print, made after a drawing by Guercino, was inserted into the catalogue of the sale of his collection that took place after his death.

Cat. no. 90

Text by Louis de Subleyras

Italian, Rome 1742–1814 Rome Etchings by Étienne de Lavallée-Poussin

French, Rouen 1733–1793 Paris

Hubert Robert French, Paris 1733–1808 Paris

Franz Edmund Weirotter

Austrian, Innsbruck 1733–1771 Vienna

Nella venuta in Roma di madama le Comte e dei Signori Watelet, e Copette, 1764

Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge

This small volume grew out of the close friendships between young students at the

Académie de France and visiting amateurs. A collaborative tribute to Claude Henri Watelet and his mistress Marguerite Le Comte, the book comprised thirty-two plates; half were scenes commemorating events of their visit and half were sonnets by Louis de

Subleyras, son of the French painter Pierre Hubert Subleyras, set within decorative etched borders. Étienne de Lavallée-Poussin, who was likely the coordinator of the project, drew and etched this scene depicting Watelet and his entourage at the dramatic falls at Tivoli accompanied by the young artists, as well as the border of the facing sonnet.

Cat. no. 84

Madame de Pompadour (Jean Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour) French, Paris 1721–1764 Versailles

After François Boucher

French, Paris 1703–1770 Paris

The Young Savoyard, 1751

Etching

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Robert Hartshorne, 1924 (24.33(56))

The practice of etching as a cultivated pursuit of the privileged tiers of society extended even to the royal château of Versailles, where the king’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour, had a printing press in her apartment and produced more than sixty etchings, working closely with a few artists who were members of the Académie Royale. This one of a rustic young boy, modeled on a drawing by François Boucher, may have been among her earliest efforts.

Cat. no. 88