Artist: Louis-Jacques Cathelin (1739-1804)
Title: Portrait of Louis Tocqué
Date: touched proof 1773
School: French, XVIIIth-century
Medium: engraving with inscriptions in brown ink
Dimensions: 347 x 242mm (sheet) 376 x 266 (backing mount)
Watermark: indistinct
Inscriptions/marks: on the image in brown ink around the oval border << Louis Tocqué/ Peintre ordinaire du Roi, Conseiller de l’Académie Royale/ de Peinture et de Sculpture, Associé de l’Académie Royale de Danemarck,/ Né à Paris en 1696, mort en 1772>>, on the image in brown ink on the pedestal << Depuis que ta belle ame, hélas! me fut ravie,/cher objet de mes pleurs, et de mes vains transports/mon Coeur est passé chés les morts,/L’instant qui nous rejoints, me rend seule a la vie.>>
Condition: trimmed within the plate mark and mounted on a separate sheet of laid paper
Description: Portrait of painter Louis Tocqué, after Nattier; half-length directed to left, head turned to right, holding palette and brushes, in an oval frame; proof state with hand-written inscriptions in brown ink. See BM 1910,0610.243 for the published state.
Reference: See Maskill, ‘A proof of Cathelin’s portrait of Louis Tocqué’, Print Quarterly, v. 23, n. 4, 2006, pp. 414-417, where he argues that this impression was ‘personalised’ for Tocqué’s widow.
Provenance: Colette Mas, Paris
