Jean Jacques de Boissieu's etching, “L’Hiver, d’après un dessin fait à Saint-Chamond”, 1795

Jean Jacques de Boissieu (aka Jean Jacques de Boissieux) (1736–1810)

“L’Hiver, d’après un dessin fait à Saint-Chamond” (Winter, after a drawing by Saint-Chamond), 1795.

Etching with drypoint and roulette on buff-coloured chine collé on white wove paper trimmed with a small margin (approx. 1cm) around the platemark and backed with a support sheet.

Size: (sheet) 29 x 22.3 cm; (plate)  27 x 20.5 cm;

(chine collé) 26.8 x 19.7 cm; (image borderline) 25.7 x 19.4 cm

Inscribed on plate with the artist’s initials below the image borderline: (right) “J.J.B.”

State iv (of iv) with the image borderline “connected to the upper right corner”—in the earlier state this corner is incomplete. Regarding this upper right corner, note that dotted marks left by the vice/tongs used for holding the plate are visible and similar marks may also be seen on the lower left corner.

Perez 1994 98.IV (Marie-Félicie Perez 1994, “L'Oeuvre gravé de Jean-Jacques de Boissieu”, Geneva, Éditions du Tricorne, p. 216); IFF 98.II (Département des Estampes 1930, “Inventaire du Fonds, Français: graveurs du XVIIe siècle”, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale).

Perez offers the following description of this print:

(Transl.) “On the bare ground which forms the first planes of the print, one sees an old tree trunk carrying some small branches without leaves: one of them goes up to the … [border] line of the top. A goat, seen in profile and turned to the right, is stopped in the middle of the landscape. In the lower right corner, a peasant, passing at the foot of the old tree, looks to the left at a group of six children who are warming themselves around a fire in the field, and whose smoke rises in column and blends with the clouds of a hazy sky. Further [away], two goats wander on a mound …. The aspect of this landscape is that of winter in the countryside” (p. 216).

See also the description offered by the British Museum:

https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=3329860&partId=1&searchText=Boissieu+winter&page=1

Condition: Richly inked and near faultless chine collé impression with small margins laid upon a support of archival (millennium quality) washi paper. The sheet is in excellent condition (i.e. there are no tears, holes, folds, abrasions, stains, foxing or signs of use).

I am selling this visually arresting landscape executed with great subtlety—note in particular the artist’s amazingly skill to suggest the weight, mass and rigidity of the grimly pollarded tree in the centre of the composition—for AU$210 in total (currently US$148.59/EUR132.59/GBP113.68 at the time of posting this print) including postage and handling to anywhere in the world (but not, of course, any import duties/taxes imposed by some countries).

If you are interested in purchasing this small but very strong print, 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