Mount 44 x 36 cm, print inside mount 33 x 26 cm

In very good condition, laid to card, trimmed to image. Mount new

This superb print is printed in color using a technique known as 'à la poupée', in which coloured inks were applied directly to the copper plate and a single impression made. This highly skilled and expensive technique was rarely used but the results, as here, are impressive when compared to the more common technique of using hand colour on monochrome prints.

The print was engraved by J Duthé, a French engraver who is known to have been active c1800-1840, and to have made, among other works, colour prints of elegiac subjects such as this one. We have not however been able to identify the artist (whose name has been trimmed) or the nature of the subject matter. It appears to be a narrative - a young boy dressed simply and in bare feet is telling a slightly more well presented family of women and children of something that has happened or is about to do so.