Sébastien Le Clerc’s etching, “Rocky Landscape with River”, 1693

Sébastien Le Clerc (aka Sébastien Leclerc) (1637–1714)

“Rocky Landscape with River”, 1693, plate 5 from a series of 12 landscapes, first published by Nicolas Langlois in 1693; a second edition was issued by Lamy in 1784. This impression is from the second edition of 1764.

Etching on laid paper lined with a conservator’s support sheet.

Size: (sheet) 11.1 x 19 cm; (plate) 10.3 x 19 cm; (image borderline) 9.4 x 18 cm

Inscribed within the image borderline at the lower-left corner, “S. le Clerc. f.”, and numbered, “5”, below the image borderline at the lower-left corner.

State ii (of ii) (Note: I have also listed an impression of the first state).

IFF 1010.II (Inventaire du Fonds Français: Bibliothèque Nationale, Département des Estampes, Paris, 1930); Jombert 1774 107.5 (Charles-Antoine Jombert 1774, “Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre de Sébastien Leclerc, chevalier romain”, 2 vol, Paris)

The British Museum offers the following description of this print:

“Plate 5: rocky landscape with river running through the middle.” (http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=1628529&partId=1&searchText=S%25u00e9bastien+Leclerc&page=1)

Condition: crisp impression, trimmed along the platemark on the left and right sides with narrow margins at the top and bottom edges and laid upon a support sheet of fine washi paper. The print is in good condition for its age (i.e. there are no tears, holes, stains or foxing), but the surface shows slight signs of use (i.e. the sheet is not pristine).

I am selling this stunning impression by the "graveur du Roi" for Louis XIV, Sébastien Le Clerc, for a total cost of AU$142 (currently US$108.75/EUR95.51/GBP83.75 at the time of this listing) including postage and handling to anywhere in the world.

If you are interested in purchasing this small but graphically powerful etching of an idealised landscape, please contact me (oz_jim@printsandprinciples.com) and I will send you a PayPal invoice to make the payment easy.

This print has been sold

This is a print that has everything that I believe might appeal to a late 17^th century taste for landscape: craggy mountains with a rock pinnacle and a natural arch—the arch is somewhat disguised in shadows but is nevertheless shown on the far right—and natural forces forming the land in terms of waterfalls, streams and even eddying currents—the latter suggested by the agitated water in the foreground. Going further, this was the time when popular notions of landscape, especially in the Netherlands, had been shaped by artists like Joachim Patinir (c.1480–1524) whose vision of landscape is what is now termed as “world landscape” or to use the more common German expression: “Weltlandschaft.” To borrow the explanation for this term from Wikipedia, Weltlandschaft is “a type of composition in Western painting [and prints] showing an imaginary panoramic landscape seen from an elevated viewpoint that includes mountains and lowlands, water, and buildings” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_landscape).