Artist: Manuel Salvador Carmona (1734-1820)
Title: Portrait of Michel Odieuvre, painter and print dealer born at Romilly in the Diocese of Evreux in 1687
Date: 1754
School: Spanish/French XVIIIth-century
Medium: engraving
Dimensions: 152 x 114mm (plate), 270 x 180mm (sheet)
Watermark: partial watermark top left of sheet
Inscriptions/marks: in the plate lower border below the oval <<M. ODIEUVRE/Peintre et Md. d’Estampes/Né à Romilly Diocese d’Evreux en 1687.>>, in the plate lower left border <<M.l Salvador Carmona delineavit et sculpsit 1754.>>
Condition: fair condition on laid paper with wide margins, some foxing and ink marks
Description: Portrait of Michel Odieuvre (1687-1756) print publisher, specialising in cheap portraits, commissioned from Wille, Schmidt and others (see Wille’s Journal for his amusing remarks about Odieuvre’s meanness). Many of his plates were gathered as suites and were also published to illustrate books. Acquired many older plates for re-issue (if necessary reworked and cut down to size) for inclusion in books such as Dreux du Radier’s ‘L’Europe Illustre’, published by Odieuvre in 1755-65 to accompany 600 of his portraits. Suite of ‘Personnes illustres’ from 1735 to after 1745; ‘Recueil des portraits des rois de France’ from 1738-44 (60 plates). Also published a few genre prints after Jeaurat and others. Died suddenly on a business trip to Rouen. Plates later re-issued without his address. Advertisements in Mercure from 1735-50; and in the Journal de Verdun. (BM biography)
Provenance: Colette Mas, Paris
