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Print, Design for a Cartouche Representing an Allegory of the Painter, 1740
This is a Print. It was designed by Jacques de Lajoüe and engraved by Gabriel Huquier. It is dated 1740 and we acquired it in 1920. Its medium is engraving on white laid paper. It is a part of the Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design department.
Designing a Painer
The image of the painter in his studio is a popular and common visual theme from the early modern period to the present. This particular cartouche, designed by Jacques de Lajoüe, shows a painter with the tools of his trade arranged in the form of a cartouche (a type of an ornamental frame). With the rise of the rococo style in eighteenth century France, cartouches were increasingly used as central ornamental motifs.
Jacques de Lajoüe was painter of architectural fantasies and a prolific designer of ornament prints. He is often referred to as one of the inventors of the rococo style. However, this cartouche presents a composition far removed from the typical rococo iconography of unfurling foliages, shells, flowers, garlands and corals. In the center is a painter, clad in his smock, sitting at an oval canvas with his brush poised against the surface. The oval canvas here stands in for the usual blank center of a cartouche. In his other hand he holds several brushes and a palette. His shadow is reflected on the canvas, reminiscent of Pliny’s tale that Butades, a daughter of a sculptor, drew the outline of her lover’s shadow and thus invented the art of drawing and subsequently the arts.
The painter holds a comically long fire poker in his lap and with it, stokes the fire in the coal oven behind his easel. Near the oven is a child, likely his apprentice, who grinds up pigment in order to make paint. Also depicted in the small rustic studio space are bottles, containers, and materials for frames and mounts. On top of the shed is an owl, likely a reference to Minerva, the patron goddess of the arts. Behind, the rays of the sun shine onto the canvas, imbuing it with metaphorical genius. While the overgrown leaves, the leaping flames from the oven, and the awning of the shed together form an outline of a cartouche; the composition within is closer to François Boucher’s depiction of a painter in his studio.
This object was featured in our Object of the Week series in a post titled Designing a Painter.
It is credited Purchased for the Museum by the Advisory Council.
Its dimensions are
Platemark: 22 x 19 cm (8 11/16 x 7 1/2 in.)
It is inscribed
On plate, upper left: C; upper right: 3; lower left: De la joue in.; lower center: C.P.R.; lower right: huquier sculp. et. ex.; on sheet, upper right: 12; lower right: 3
Cite this object as
Print, Design for a Cartouche Representing an Allegory of the Painter, 1740; Designed by Jacques de Lajoüe (French, 1687–1761); Engraved by Gabriel Huquier (French, 1695–1772); France; engraving on white laid paper; Platemark: 22 x 19 cm (8 11/16 x 7 1/2 in.); Purchased for the Museum by the Advisory Council; 1921-6-326-12
