THE SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS OF THE ACADÉMIE DES SCIENCES AT THE LOUVRE

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LE CLERC, Sébastien.

Cabinet Geometrique de Mr. le Clerc.

Paris, chez Basset rue S. Jacques, [1770s?].

Folio [ 38x 25cm the platemark; 45 x 31.5cm the sheet]. Etching with bright contemporary hand-color. Very fresh, excellent.

Rare, separately issued etching, here in contemporary hand-color, by the celebrated printmaker Sébastien Le Clerc (1637-1714) depicting the cabinet of the Académie des Sciences at the Louvre with its fascinating assortment of more than 100 instruments and objects relating to the study of astronomy, optics, perspective, architecture, physics, painting, sculpture, music, and the military arts. Le Clerc himself can be seen standing in front of the desk at the far left in the group of scholars engaged in lively discussion (according to Jombert, p. 267). The work is remarkable for its rather dispassionate depiction of these complex instruments in their early 18^th-century setting of the ‘Cabinet Geometrique’, making an interesting contrast to Le Clerc’s other depiction of the Académie des Sciences, a renowned – and quite grand, even baroque – engraving dating from 1696 (Jombert, no. 263).

The present etching has the hallmarks of having been designed as a vue d’optique (centralized perspective, bright coloration). The plate seems first to have been cut in 1711 or 1712, and although no prints taken from it are dated, examples were likely printed as late as the 1770s; Le Clerc’s preparatory drawings for the design still survive (see Brejon de Lavergnée). Jombert suggests that this late Le Clerc etching, with its simple linear style, may be an unfinished work. The ambiguous grammar of the print’s inscription (“Cabinet Geometrique de Mr. le Clerc,” added later) has led some to suggest that the instruments and study depicted here belonged to Le Clerc himself, but Jombert is clear that the work depicts the Académie des Sciences and the prominence of Le Clerc’s name in the inscription was likely a result of the artist’s extremely high status among 18^th-century print collectors. Examples of this print also exist without an address (first state) and with the address of the Paris print seller Jacques Chereau (“A Paris chez J. Chereau rue St Jacques au desous de la Fontaine St Severin aux 2 Colonnes No 267”), who was in business at the same time as Basset (see Almanach général, p. 516). The three states are clearly from the same plate and neither of the signed states shows any pattern of plate-wear that might indicate the primacy of one over the other.

Sébastien Le Clerc was a prolific printmaker, technical draftsman, and military engineer, who early in his career focused on physics, architecture and perspective (see his 1668 Géometrie Pratique), but under the tutelage of the renowned painter Charles Le Brun (1619-1690) became an etcher/engraver of the highest caliber, rising to the status of Graveur du Roi.

* C. A. Jombert, Catalogue Raisonée de l’Oeuvre de Sébastien le Clerc (Paris, 1774), vol. II, pp. 266-267, no 310; B. Brejon de Lavergnée, Dessin français de XVIIe siècle. Inventaire (BnF), no. 214; E. C. Watson, “The Early Days of the Académie des Sciences,” Osiris 7 (1939): 556-587; Thieme-Becker, vol. XXII, 523/524; Almanach général des marchands, négocians et armateurs de la France …, (1786), p. 516.

Price: $1,450.00