Charles-Nicolas Cochin: La Fontaine [The Fountain]

Cochin’s print was announced in the Mercure de France along with its pendant La Blanchisseuse  in June 1739. The advert went on to say that the prints were ‘well deserving of comparison with the paintings,
in the opinion of the enlightened public which saw them exhibited at the last Salon’.

There was a developing undercurrent of interest in genre themes both among the cultured bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. In Chardin’s case it was marked by an austerity in technique and content directly contrasting with Boucher’s open eroticism. The prints engraved after his paintings facilitated his almost immediate popularity and led to wide-spread copying of his work.