Picart

The grandson of a bookseller and the son of the engraver Étienne Picart (a member of the Royal Academy), Bernard Picart benefited from an extensive artistic and cultural education. In 1689, he in turn joined the Academy and worked alongside Sébastien Leclerc, who introduced him to medal drawing. Although drawn to drawing and painting, he joined the family business located on Rue Saint-Jacques in Paris and decided to devote himself to invention engraving rather than interpretation engraving, in order to satisfy his creativity. A prolific draftsman, Picart supplied Mariette with numerous plates for the Modes françoises and the Modes du théâtre italien, work that nurtured his interest in observing everyday details—costumes, accessories. In 1696, he traveled to Antwerp and received the prize of that city’s Academy, then went on to Holland and likely the United Kingdom. Upon his return to Paris in 1699, he worked there until 1710. During this period, he married and founded a family, which he lost entirely in 1708. He worked on various projects, such as illustrating the so-called Mortier Bible, producing plates after the Marie de’ Medici cycle in the Luxembourg Palace, and plates for the Iliad edited by Anne Dacier in 1712. His drawing and engraving techniques also improved during this time, as he multiplied his experiments.

In 1710, he left for Holland with his father. This change corresponded both to his conversion to Protestantism and to his desire to seize new economic opportunities: a stronghold of publishing, Holland offered the prospect of numerous projects, especially after the deaths of several major Dutch engravers, which left promising openings for newcomers. He found his place with ease within the French community of the Republic of Letters, but also integrated into Dutch society, notably through his marriage to Anne Vincent, the daughter of a paper merchant in Amsterdam. Between 1711 and 1720, he worked on numerous publishing and medal projects. In 1720, he undertook the Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde. From 1719 onward, he unofficially directed a drawing school and, for that purpose, produced numerous male academies, impressive for their size and force.

In the final part of his life, Picart left the engraving work to others but remained a prolific draftsman, continuing to experiment with all techniques. He produced beautiful red-chalk drawings of extreme meticulousness for the baron Philipp von Stosch’s Gemmae antiquae caelatae (1724), softening the fine hatching with his fingertip; spirited decorative vignettes in pen and gray wash (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. RP-T-191 101); portraits in pen and wash, and others in red-chalk wash. He also copied numerous drawings by old masters, preserved in major private collections in Paris or Holland, and assembled their engravings into a volume he called Impostures innocentes ou Recueil d’estampes d’après divers peintres illustres.

Although unanimously admired and celebrated during his lifetime, Picart was quickly forgotten and considered a minor master—an attentive craftsman but lacking imagination. In 2019, an exhibition at the Port-Royal Museum devoted to his drawn works, preserved in many public collections, helped restore recognition to his visual culture, impeccable technique, and great creativity.

Like the Singing Couple kept at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (Fig. 1), this charming study of a viola da gamba player, executed in red chalk, prepares the corresponding figure for a famous engraving of its time, Concert in a Garden, dated 1709 (Fig. 2), thus the year preceding Picart’s departure for Amsterdam. The Albertina in Vienna preserves a large preparatory drawing dated 1707 (Fig. 3; Inv. 11956). The 1709 engraving is accompanied by a poem by François Gacon:

In the shade of the groves on a fine summer’s day,
This pleasant company
Savours the sweet pleasure that harmony gives
When everything is well attuned.

But amid the charms of beautiful music
Whether by Baptiste or by Lambert,
Love plays its part and very often delights
In making two hearts sigh in unison.

In 1711, upon receiving a proof, Nicodemus Tessin the Younger expressed his admiration in these terms: “You have done me the pleasure of sending me a print engraved by Monsieur Picart, which represents a musical concert, where, among others, a woman plays the harpsichord; I am having a painting three feet long made after it, which is turning out beyond imagination […] The print is marvelous in its genre—was it made after a painting or not? It is too finished not to be, and yet I believe it to be purely the work of the engraver’s genius; might one still find from him something of equally good taste to form its pendant.”

Tessin, therefore, faced with the quality of the composition, finds it difficult to believe it is the work of a simple engraver; the composition, the beauty of the surrounding park, the refined details of the costumes—all contribute to highlighting Picart’s true narrative and graphic talent, whose training as a painter is evident.

His sense of detail and costume is equally evident in our study and in the Oxford drawing: Picart’s interest in fashion, costumes, and accessories was indeed nourished by the many fashion plates he produced for Mariette. The Singing Couple in Oxford is dated 1708, which led Axel Moulinier to consider that it might be an isolated reworking of the group based on the large composition study in the Albertina, intended to form a self-contained work for sale or as a gift. Although created in 1707, our study could raise a similar question. However, the figure is shown alone, without his violinist companion (the pair would have formed a more engaging image); he is not wearing the outdoor hat he dons in the engraving; and he is seated on a chair rather than on the raised ground of the engraving. These details suggest rather that it is a study done from life—whether the musician was an actual performer or a friend posing for the artist, as Watteau arranged, remains to be determined—which Picart later used in his engraving. The draftsmanship is controlled while remaining spontaneous, the posture and expression lively and natural; the drawing is highly evocative of the light and graceful manner of drawing, and more generally of the art of living during the Regency period. The engraving and the drawings that precede it are unquestionably among the artist’s most significant works before his departure for Holland.