Tête de Flore (Head of Flora)

Bonnet, Louis Marin (printmaker)

Boucher, François (draughtsman)

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Title/s

Tête de Flore

Translated title

Head of Flora

Maker/s

Bonnet, Louis Marin (printmaker) French artist, 1743-1793

Boucher, François after (draughtsman) French artist, 1703-1770

Category

print

Name

print

School/Style

French

Production Notes

I/II

Technique/s

pastel manner

colour printing

Material/s

coloured ink (medium)
black carbon ink (medium)
laid paper (support)

Dimensions

image height: 402 mm
image width: 321 mm
sheet height: 408 mm
sheet height: 327 mm

Date

1769

Provenance

given: The Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum 1959-01 (Prints given by The Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum)
Comte de Béhague (Lugt 2004), sold 19 February - 3 March 1877; Julius Model; Eldridge R. Johnson; ? sold at Sotheby's 18 January 1956; bought by The Friends of the Fitzwilliam

Collector's mark

Lugt 2004

Lugt, F.
(1921) Les Marques de Collections et Dessins D'Estampes ... , Amsterdam

Inscriptions/Marks

1. Position: image upper right
   Type: signature
   Method: printed
   Content: f. Boucher 1757
   Description:
   
2. Position: image lower left
   Type: signature
   Method: printed
   Content: Bonnet 1769
   Description:
   
3. Position: verso
   Type: inscription
   Method: red ink
   Content: O surmounted by a crown
   Description: Lugt 2004
   

Other Notes

Bonnet's 'Tête de Flore' represents one of the greatest achievements of printmaking in eighteenth-century France, highly regarded for the complex technique used to create it and for the delicate handling of colour in the image. Bonnet developed his method of colour printing from the demand for 'crayon manner' or 'chalk manner' prints, a subtle form of etching lines of tone to convincingly imitate the effects of chalk drawings. This print can be seen as the culmination of the artist's experiments with multiple-plate printing in the 1760s, where he employed up to six plates to produce images with layers of colour and tone. Remarkably, 'Tête de Flore' employs eight such plates, each stage being detailed by the artist in a description that he submitted with a set of progressive proofs to the Marquis of Marigny, which led a recommendation that Bonnet should receive a pension from the King for his ingenuity. Bonnet's innovative method to ensure the accurate layering of colour involved the use of registration pins to guide the printer, and a further development was his use of plates inked with more than one colour, which helped to create the range of tones seen in this print. The eighth plate was inked with a special white ink, for which Bonnet had become famous, as it imitated the delicate use of white chalk for highlights and softened the other colours to suggest the tint of pastel. This impression is trimmed, partly in order to remove the marks left by registration pins and also to heighten the illusion that it is a drawing. The identity of the sitter is François Boucher's daughter, Marie-Emilie, who married Boucher's student, Pierre-Antoine Baudouin in 1758, a year after the pastel was executed.

Standard print ref/s

Herold (Bonnet) 192
Hérold, Jacques
(1935) Louis-Marin Bonnet (1736-1793): catalogue de l'oeuvre gravé , Colmar, Paris : Maurice Rousseau

Documentation

1. (1960) Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Fifty-first Annual Report, for the Year 1959, Cambridge (Cambs.) [page: cover]
2. (1989 - 90) Treasures from the Fitzwilliam: ''The Increase of Learning and other great Objects of that Noble Foundation'', Cambridge (Cambs.) [page: 118]

Accession Number

P.59-1959 (Paintings, Drawings and Prints)
(Reference Number: 81662; Input Date: 2002-11-06 / Last Edit: 2011-07-22)