Engraving In The 18th Century Aquatint, View From The Louvre From The River Side, 1787

Jean-François JANINET (engraver: 1752 -1814) / Jean-Nicolas-Louis DURAND (draftsman 1760 - 1834) Made around 1787, rare intermediate state between strong strong water without the bridge and the final version with aquatint with a bridge in the foreground; belongs to the series of Views of the most beautiful public and private buildings of the city of Paris Interesting topographic and heritage subject engraved by a French engraver of the eighteenth famous for his etchings in color with aquatint, Jean-François Janinet, whom he learned to master in the studio of Louis Bonnet. Janinet improved the process so that the difference between a watercolor or a wash becomes impalpable. The Louvre is represented from the Seine with its fluvial life, its boats full of goods, its quay imperceptibly filled with walkers and carriages. Fine and very soft, the gray blue, very Parisian facades and the Seine, contrasts with the mineral facades of the Louvre, just enamelled with brown reflections and boats in the red earth. Nota bene: our test presents, as in the black proof listed in the collections of the Carnavalet Museum, A second view of the Louvre without the bridge, unlike the aquatint version that also owns the Carnavalet Museum, still by Janinet after Durand and around 1787, which makes it appear in the foreground. Our test is thus an intermediate state between the black engraving of the Carnavalet museum (primitive state of this print) and the color engraving (aquatint) where the bridge appears after probably a correction made to the plate. An engraving with a very Parisian atmosphere in the subject but also in the chosen palette, remarkable finesse as sweetness in its tones, and representative of the know-how of Janine. Some accidents with the frame redore, framing pleasant, some marginal rednesses
Dimensions: 41 cm x 36 cm with the frame - A sight 30 x 25 cm inside the marie-louise - diameters of the subject engraved alone inside the lines of the oval 25.5 x 19.5cm