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Identification and Creation

Object Number
2006.309
People
Gilles Demarteau, French (Liège 1722 - 1776)
After François Boucher, French (Paris 1703 - 1770 Paris)
Title
The Thief
Other Titles
Original Language Title: Le Maraudeur
Classification
Prints
Work Type
print
Date
c. 1769
Culture
French
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/318170

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Chalk manner, printed in red and black inks
Dimensions
Image: 25 × 17 cm (9 13/16 × 6 11/16 in.)
Plate: 28.5 × 20.6 cm (11 1/4 × 8 1/8 in.)
Sheet: 29.5 × 21 cm (11 5/8 × 8 1/4 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • inscription: printed l.l.: Boucher in del.
  • inscription: printed l.r.: Demarteau Sculp
  • inscription: printed lower margin: Le Maraudeur / A Paris chez Demarteau l'aine, rue de la Pelterie a la cloche

State, Edition, Standard Reference Number

State
ii/ii
Standard Reference Number
IFF, vol VI, no. 129, p. 377; Leymarie 129; Jean-Richard 703

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Nesta and Walter Spink
Accession Year
2006
Object Number
2006.309
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Descriptions

Commentary
A number of printmakers, beginning in the 1760s, developed the "chalk manner" (also called "crayon manner") technique for rendering imitations of pastel or chalk lines, most often used to create facsimiles of drawings. Chalk-manner prints were made in as many as three colors-black, red, and white-from one or more copper plates worked either in etching or engraving, or in a combination of the two. Special toothed tools such as roulettes were used to create dotted patterns on the plate that suggest the grainy appearance of chalk lines on paper. Demarteau was a master of the chalk-manner technique. Le Maraudeur, after a drawing by Boucher is nearly an exact replica, although the image appears in reverse. Head of a Woman Looking Up also reproduces a Boucher drawing (the location of the drawing is now unknown)-a study of the head of Aurora for the painting The Rising Sun. Demarteau often executed his prints on the same scale as the drawings he was copying, and also mixed printer's inks to closely match the colored chalks of the original.

Publication History

  • Margaret Morgan Grasselli, Colorful Impressions: The Printmaking Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art/Lund Humphries Publishers (Washington, D.C., 2003), [not Harvard impression]

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu