Abraham Bosse ( 1642) in a Sculptors Studio.

Abraham Bosse (1604 - 1676)

Etcher.

In a Sculptors Studio

1642.

(French, Tours 1602/1604–1676 Paris).

Another blog entry in an occasional series depicting sculpture in other media.

Bosse was born in Tours and was brought up as a Calvinist. His father, Louis, was a Calvinist tailor, born in the Duchy of Clèves near Kranenburg, a region situated near the Dutch border, but now in Germany. However, his mother, Marie Martinet, was a Catholic. He married Catherine Sarrabat, the daughter of a clockmaker in Tours, in 1633 and settled in Paris shortly afterwards, where he worked for the engraver Melchior Tavernier, who was also a Huguenot.

His first etchings date to 1622, and are influenced by Jacques Bellange. After meeting Jaques Callot in Paris in about 1630, whose technical innovations in etching he popularised in a famous and much translated Manual of Etching (1645), the first to be published. He took Callot's highly detailed small images to a larger size, and a wider range of subject matter.

He was a prolific etcher producing over 1200 images (mostly book illustrations).

Unlike Callot, his declared aim, in which he largely succeeded, was to make etchings look like engravings, to which end he sacrificed willingly the freedom of the etched line, whilst certainly exploiting to the full the speed of the technique. Like most etchers, he frequently used engraving on a plate in addition to etching, but produced no pure engravings.

In 1641 he attendended classes given by the architect Girard Desargues (1591–1661) on perspective and other technical aspects of depiction. Bosse began using these methods and published a series of works between 1643–1653 explaining and promoting them.

see - Moyen Universel de pratiquer la Perspective sur les tableaux, ou surfaces irrégulières, ensemble quelques particularitez concernant cet art et celuy de la graveure en taille douce, par A. Bosse, A Paris, chez l'autheur en l'Isle du Palais, sur le quay qui regarde celuy de la Megisserie, 1653.

In 1648, when Cardinal Mazarin established the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, Bosse was made a founding member. However his publicising of Desargues' methods embroiled him in a controversy with Charles Le Brun and his followers who had different methods, and also a belief that "genius" rather than technical method should be the guide in creating artworks. In 1661 Bosse was forced to withdraw from the Academy; he established his own school as an alternative.

Inscription: Lettered in plate, below image: Voicy la representation d'un Sculpteur dans son Attelier / Les Choses dont il forme...une aue grandeur / fait aleau forte par ABosse, a Paris en Lisle du palais, Ian 1642. avec Privilege.

26 x 32.3 cms. - (Plate size).

Image courtesy Metropolital Museum. New York.

References:

Georges Duplessis Catalogue de l'oeuvre de Abraham Bosse. Paris, 1859, cat. no. 1386, p. 160.

André Blum L'Oeuvre gravé d'Abraham Bosse. 1924, cat. no. 204.

Sophie Join-Lambert, Maxime Préaud Abraham Bosse: Savant graveur. Exh. cat., Bibliothèque nationale de France; Tours: Musée des beaux-arts. 2004, cat. no. 199, p. 222, ill.

José Lothe L'oeuvre gravé d'Abraham Bosse. Graveur parisien du XVIIe siècle. Paris, 2008, cat. no. 253, pp. 264, 308, ill.

Le Blanc Marianne, D’acide et d’encre, Abraham Bosse (1604?-1676) et son siècle en perspectives, CNRS Editions, 2004, p. 317

Weigert Roger Armand, Bosse Abraham : le peintre converty aux précises et universelles règles de son art : Sentiments sur la distinction des diverses manières de peinture, dessin et gravure, Hermann, Paris, 1964.

A reversed copy of the Bosse etching signed N. Lauwers (1600 - 1652).

Nicolaes Lauwers of Antwerp.

According to the RKD he joined the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in 1619, and opened a print workshop shortly after that on the Lombardenvest, called ‘In de scryvende Hand’ (in the writing hand).[1] He married 8 February 1628 to Maria Vermeulen and became deacon of guild in 1635. He taught the students Nicolaes Pitau, and Hendrick Snyers, in addition to his young brother Conrad. He is known for prints after Rubens and Gerard Seghers

Image from page 189 of "Traité des Pratiques Geometrales et Perspectives : enseignées dans l'Academie Royale de la Peinture et Sculpture" (1665).

A Gentleman Examining Print.

Eleventh plate opposite page 30 in the book Traité de manières de graver …by Abraham Bosse 

Pub.Paris: Pierre Auboüin and Charles Clousier, 1701.

Etching and Engraving.

175 x 115 mm.

Image Courtesy Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.