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Gilles DEMARTEAU
(1722 Liege – 1776 Paris)
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Les quatre heures du jour [Four times of the day] (complete set) – c. 1776
after Jean-Baptiste Hüet.
Crayon-manner engravings printed in two colours. The sheet’s top edges are pasted onto 19th century mount. Framed in contemporary or 19th century gilt frame.
Size of sheet: c.28 x 34 cm.
Leymarie, 1896, No.546 - 549; IFF 6:546-549; Wittert 1883 No.546-549.
Provenance: The Raymond & Suzanne Fischof-La Foux Collection.
Exceptionally fine impressions of this rare set with a distinguished provenance.
Gilles Demarteau: Four times of the day
Demarteau is credited with the invention of the so-called 'crayon-manner' engraving. Though Jean-Charles François (1717-1769) was officially recognized as the first to use this method in 1757, Demarteau perfected it further and used it with real artistic feeling and a style of his own. After his first collaboration with François in 1756 till his death, Demarteau published hundreds of chalk-manner prints. A large portion of those were after the drawings by Boucher and Hüet.
Almost all of Demarteau’s prints bear numbers that were inscribed into the copperplate at the time of publication. These numbers record the approximate order in which the prints were made and later served as the basis for a catalogue compiled in 1788 by the artist’s nephew and collaborator, Gilles-Antoine.