Artists and Amateurs Etching in 18Th-Century France

News Release The Metropolitan Museum of Art Communications Department 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028-0198 tel (212) 570-3951 fax (212) 472-2764 [email protected] 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 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 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.

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