Antique Prints, Famous Engravings

Imagine... A very wealthy and mildly eccentric grand uncle with a great and healthy taste for the fine arts has passed, and you inherit all the wonderful things you'll find in the attic, in something like a treasure chest... That sounds like the opening of one of those wildly romantic adventure stories, but the 18th century rococo engravings in the chest are for real! They are put in marvellous frames and extremely well preserved, covered with a glass plate.

Now, you have to start something like a true treasure hunt, surfing that wonderful worldwide web. Who are these guys like Louis-Marin Bonnet, Francis Vivares, Gabriel Huquier? And what are they worth, these antique prints?

Interested in not only the story of the rococo engravings? Just contact the Lost Dutchman!

Pastel manner printed in red, blue, yellow and black inks

with two colors of applied gold leaf sheet,

outer framing line: 28,5 x 23,5 cm (11 1/4 x 9 1/4)

L. Marin invenit 1774

The Milk Woman

To be sold at F. Vivares ingreat Newport Street London

LOUIS-MARIN BONNET (1736-1793):

French engraver and publisher. He came from a family of artisans and owed his training in engraving to his brother-in-law, the engraver Louis Legrand (1723-1808). Through Legrand, Bonnet became the pupil of Jean-Charles François in 1756, a year before the latter discovered the crayon manner technique of engraving, designed to reproduce the effect of a coloured-chalk drawing. Around the end of 1757 Bonnet used the new technique to engrave a Cupid. He also was the first one to use a technique to make false gold leafs around his subjects. He exploited the taste for "English Exotism" of his fellow citizens by publishing his prints with a text in English.

In the handbook of the Collection of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, we read about Bonnet: The son of a Parisian stocking manufacturer, Bonnet trained with the engravers Louis-Claude LeGrand and Jean-Charles François, the latter the inventor of the chalk-manner technique of printmaking. Erroneously referred to as engravings, chalk-, crayon- or pastel-manner prints are actually etchings made with a metal wheel called a roulette with a random pattern of variously sized points that was rolled over a plate coated with a protective wax ground. When the plate was etched in acid, the resulting pattern of dots provided a passable approximation of the original chalk drawing.

Bonnet's prints made in this way became immensely popular with collectors seeking images that imitated the subtle blend of colors epitomized by the drawings of Watteau, Boucher, and their contemporaries. During the late 1770s and 1780s, Bonnet's success as a color printmaker was unrivaled; he counted among his patrons the wealthiest Parisian collectors of the time, and at his death he was able to leave behind a sizable estate despite the changing tastes brought on by the Revolution.

FRANCIS VIVARES (1709-1782):

François or Francis Vivares was born in France, but at the age of eighteen established himself in London. He is regarded as one of the earliest and most influential landscape engravers, known for his meticulous technique and bold style. He also was a famous print-seller who sold in his print-shop The Milk Woman.

9.8 x 16.3 inches or 25,0 x 41,3 cm

"Optical print" by an unknown artist, maybe Gabriel Huquier or his son Jacques-Gabriel Huquier, with a perspective view of the old Palace of Westminster. In the 18th and 19th century there were many popular establishments in Paris and London which produced optical viewing devices and special engravings to be viewed through them. In the 18the century the "optical print" or "vue optique" came into existence, whose exaggerated converging lines were intended to produce the optical illusion of deep recession. The viewing devices for which these perspective prints were produced, consisted of a lens and a mirror, this requiring the use of reversed or mirror-image pictures. As a result of their constant handling, optical prints in excellent condition - like this one - are extremely rare!

Boucher was known for his "sweet" paintings with a sensual undertone. Together with Jean-Honore Fragonard, Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin, Jean-Baptiste Greuze et Jean Antoine Watteau, Boucher is the main representative of the French rococo. He produced several portraits of madame de Pompadour and wall decorations for the palace of Versailles, he designed tapestries, theatrical scenery and costumes for the opera. The Wallace Collection in London, the Louvre in Paris, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles all have Boucher collections.

Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) was a French painter who had a great success at the 1755 Salon with his Father Reading the Bible to His Children (Louvre, Paris). He became enormously popular with similar sentimental and melodramatic genre scenes. Much of Greuze's later work consisted of pictures of "innocent" young girls with only thinly veiled sexual allusions. With the swing of taste towards Neoclassicism, his work went out of fashion. At the end of his career he received a commission to paint a portrait of Napoleon, but he died in poverty. His work is well represented in the Louvre and the Wallace Museum in London.

Jacques-Gabriel Huquier (1725-1805) also known as James Gabriel Huquier was the son of the famous engraver Gabriel Huquier. He married to the daughter of the engraver Chéreau, with whom he collaborated as an engraver and printseller, including several series engraved after François Boucher. He then established himself as a maker of fans and wallpaper. Around 1770 he moved to England, exiled it is said because of his publication of an anti-Jesuit satire. He exhibited some pastels at the Royal Academy and was also represented at the Society of Artists. He worked in London, Cambridge and Shrewsbury.