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[CHALCOGRAPHY OF THE LOUVRE - ART OF THE early 18th century - MONUMENTS OF FRANCE - PARIS -

ENGRAVINGS FROM THE ORIGINAL PLATES

VARIOUS PROCESSES: ETCHING - INTAGLIA - CHISEL - LITHOGRAPHY etc... ]

We sell as a result in our ebay store
coming from a collector a beautiful set of engravings
drawn by the Art workshops of the Louvre chalcography and marketed
by the Réunion des Musées Nationaux (RMN)

These superbly and carefully executed engravings are always printed directly on the original dies (copper, stone, etc.) by master craftsmen who perpetuate the traditional techniques and french quality

The print run of most of the various engravings offered here is exhausted
often for a long time...

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Louvre chalcography

The Chalcography of the Louvre is an institution created in 1797 which covers three types of activity: a collection of engraved copper plates attached to the Department of Graphic Arts of the Louvre Museum, a collection of prints, and a printing workshop. prints from these plates whose marketing
is ensured by a sales shop housed by the Louvre Museum.

The word chalcography comes from the Greek and means "writing on copper", it first designates the art of engraving
on copper or different metal supports and by extension the place where the plates engraved in this way, or even from other techniques, are kept. Since its creation in 1895, the Réunion des musées nationaux (RMN) has been responsible for publishing, distributing and marketing prints, while the collection remains under the responsibility of the museum. It now has more than 13,000 engraved plates and continues to grow.

Story

La Chalcographie du Louvre was founded in 1797 by bringing together several collections of engravings built up under the Ancien Régime. The two most important date back to the 17th century: the King's Cabinet and the collection of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Louis XIV was the first to pursue a policy of encouraging engraving. Previously, engravers were more often considered as craftsmen than as true artists and did not have official recognition. In 1660, thanks to the intervention of ROBERT NANTEUIL , the king took a decree of the Council which granted them legal status. From then on, the engravers had a much more regular output. The first sign of importance which marked the interest of the king was the creation at the Gobelins, in 1667,
of a workshop of "ordinary engravers of the King", under the high authority of Charles Le Brun.

The King's Cabinet

The same year, Louis XIV decided, "in order to encourage the art of engraving and to continue its history",
to engrave on copper the important military and cultural events of his reign, and to reproduce the views of the most famous palaces, castles, royal houses of the time as well as the painted or sculpted works belonging to the collections of the Crown. The execution of these boards was entrusted to the greatest artists of the time: Gérard Audran, Gérard Edelinck or Claude Mellan among others. They formed a series of collections designated under the title Cabinet du Roi: the Carrousel of 1662; the Natural History of Animals, the Pleasures of the Enchanted Island (graphic report of the parties given by the King at Versailles) are among the first to be produced. Jean-Baptiste Colbert, then Superintendent of the King's Buildings, endeavored to expand the institution of the King's Cabinet and to increase the activity of the engravers: in 1670 he brought together the engraved plates in volumes embellished with descriptions to offer them to notables of the kingdom and to the ambassadors of foreign courts, thus spreading the image of the glory of the sovereign. In less than twenty years, more than 300,000 pounds were devoted to enrichment
of this fund of engraved plates.
In 1679, Colbert, worried about the magnitude of the expenses incurred, decided to make the King's Cabinet productive by selling prints of his plates. The commercialization of engravings therefore experienced growing success.
At the death of Colbert, the fund contained 1,337 engraved plates. Under Louis XV, the situation of engravers having clearly evolved, it was no longer necessary to encourage them. Acquisitions were thus limited to the representation of parties and ceremonies, or to the decoration of invitation or ball tickets. Funding came from the King's Menus-Plaisirs and no longer from the Superintendency of King's Buildings. The main engraver of this reign was Charles-Nicolas Cochin junior. Louis XVI followed the same policy, the acquisitions were even less numerous, and the main engraver of the Menus-Plaisirs was Moreau le JEUNE .
In all, 1,531 engraved plates of royal origin are still in the Chalcographie du Louvre.

The Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture

As early as 1655, seven years after its creation, the Royal Academy decided that engravers could be received as "academics", in the same way as painters and sculptors. The first licensed engraver was Sébastien Leclerc, in 1672.
To be admitted, each of the engravers had to present a "reception piece": the engraving of a portrait, as specified in 1673, then two subjects from 1704. Until 1789, 48 engravers were received: 65 reception pieces thus enriched the collections of the institution. The collection of the Academy was supplemented by two other means: donations and acquisitions. The series of 223 plates engraved by the Count of Caylus from the drawings of the King's Cabinet was the object of the most remarkable donation, by Charles Antoine Coypel, in 1747.
Towards the middle of the century, the Academy decided to exploit its collection commercially, the proceeds of the sale then allowing it to buy new boards. The success of this method allowed significant acquisitions or orders. In 1773, the institution bought the brass instruments from the estate of Jean Audran. In 1789, the collection had 570 plates. The Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture was dissolved on August 8, 1793.

French Chalcography

In 1792, the engraved plates of the Cabinet du Roi, the Royal Academy, as well as those of the depot of Menus-Plaisirs, the superintendence of Versailles, the Maison de ville de Paris and several scientific and religious establishments were brought together in the National Library of France, rue de Richelieu in Paris. Faced with the size of this collection thus brought together, General François René Jean de Pommereul had the idea of founding a national museum of engraving, a “French Chalcography”, on the model of the Apostolic Chalcography of Rome. This was to provide a new source of revenue for the state and to support the art of printmaking.
Both a museum and a conservatory of plates, this chalcography would also be the place where proofs were printed and sold, and finally the workshop where new plates would be engraved. General Pommereul submitted his bill to the Director of Public Instruction and the Minister of the Interior took the final decision to found the National Chalcography on 23 Floréal Year V (May 12, 1797). The first curator of chalcography was Louis-Marie-Joseph Morel d'Arleux, appointed the very year of the creation "custodian of drawings, prints and engraved plates". Orders and acquisitions, as well as the sale of prints began in June 1799. Thanks to propaganda undertaken from its foundation to the central schools of the departments, chalcography quickly experienced great prosperity. The plate commissioned in 1801 from Auguste Boucher-Desnoyers, based on La Belle Jardinière by Raphaël, alone brought in nearly 15,000 francs in the space of a year. However, the copperplates from the Ancien Régime remained in the lockers of the imperial library until 1812, so it was only on this date that chalcography was able to make concrete use of its collection of old plates.

Under the First Empire, the 907 copperplates forming the Description of Egypt were ordered (attributed to chalcography only in 1854), as well as 250 other plates, including the series of the Coronation of Napoleon I, the Marriage of the Emperor with Marie-Louise, the Column of the Grande Armée and Charles Le Brun's treatise on the relationship between human and animal physiognomy.
No rational exploitation of the collection available to chalcography has been attempted.

The Restoration only enriches the collection with 30 plates of the Coronation of Charles X and two portraits.

The July Monarchy brought only a portrait of Louis-Philippe I and encouragement for the publication of the Historical Galleries of Versailles by Gavard.

Under the Second Republic, a new impetus revived the activities of chalcography thanks to remarkable acquisitions: 27 plates from the Galerie du Luxembourg by Pierre Paul Rubens, 121 plates from Cities, Castles and Royal Houses by Jacques Rigaud, 126 plates from the Iconography of Antoine Van Dyck
and 30 facsimiles of Old Master drawings.

The Second Empire considerably enriches the collection of chalcography.
14 facsimiles of drawings and many plates were ordered from the great engravers of the time,
from the masterpieces of painting in the Louvre Museum. Thus, following the Universal Exhibition of 1853, the Emperor ordered 350,000 francs worth of interpretative engravings. In addition, the Ministry of Public Instruction gave him the Monumental Statistics of Paris by Albert Lenoir and monographs of the Cathedrals of Chartres and Noyon by Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus and Daniel Ramée; the city of Paris gave him the work of Baltard on the Monuments of Paris, Fontainebleau, etc. ; and the imperial library gave him the 907 plates of the Description of Egypt. In addition, important old plates were acquired, in particular the two series by Jacques Callot, the oldest plates in the Louvre Chalcography collection: Siege of Isle de Ré and Siege of La Rochelle, engraved between 1628 and 1630 in the request of Louis XIII. Finally, the Superintendent of Fine Arts decided, in 1864, to allocate to chalcography all the shipments from Rome and the grand prizes for engraving.

The Third Republic also contributed to the enrichment of the collection of chalcography,
institutionalizing procurement practices. The Ministry of National Education and Fine Arts donated each year to the Chalcographie du Louvre a certain number of plates acquired directly from artists. The Board of the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, from its creation in 1895, collected the receipts from the sale of prints and provided a credit each year for the purchase of new plates from the masters of contemporary engraving. The Ministry of Public Instruction also assigned to chalcography the significant collections of plates from the Monument of Nineveh, Nineveh and Assyria, and the Archives of the Commission of Historic Monuments. At the same time, the fund is enriched by donations from individuals such as the Gavard family or the heirs of Charles-François Daubigny.
The most important donation was that of the Société française de gravure which, when it was dissolved on July 23, 1902, decided to donate to chalcography 102 copperplates and a considerable lot of high quality proofs. Charles-Léon Wittmann was in charge of printing in the 1890s4. The engraver Louis-Isidore Journot worked in this service in the years 1910-1920, under the direction of Alfred Porcabeuf.

In the 20th century, the vast majority of acquisitions focused on original engravings, rather than interpretations (now less sought after) and on contemporary engravings. Paul Angoulvent was curator of the Chalcography of the Louvre in the years 1920-1930 and contributed to advancing knowledge
on this institution by publishing several works and catalogues, published with the complicity of Albert Morancé.

1989 sees the formalization of the Cabinet of Drawings of the Louvre, to which had been more or less linked, depending on the period, chalcography, as the seventh department of the museum, under the title “Department of Graphic Arts”. It therefore includes the collection of drawings, as well as the Edmond de Rothschild collection (given in 1935) and chalcography.

Today, this policy of acquiring original engravings from contemporary artists continues, without however excluding the enrichment of the old collection.

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