c. 1762

Sea Nymphs and Sea Gods

French, 1722 - 1776

By the 1740s, the practice of framing and displaying drawings, particularly those by popular contemporary artists like François Boucher, had become widespread. An experienced printmaker himself, Boucher was quick to grasp the potential of the chalk-manner method of engraving invented in the late 1750s and he furnished Gilles Demarteau with hundreds of drawings to reproduce. Demarteau created the print Sea Nymphs and Sea Gods after one of Boucher's preparatory drawings for a tapestry design. Chalk-manner prints like Demarteau's were avidly collected by those unable to afford Boucher's drawings. This is the only known example of this print before an engraved title was added to the blank space below.