Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (1724-1780) The Abduction of the Girls. 1778. Etching. 135 x 181. Very fine and extremely rare proof on strong laid paper (watermark: dovecote), trimmed on the plate cut, initials and date in pen and ink at the foot. A few pen strokes forming scrolls around the engraved title at lower left. On verso, traces of glue in the corners and remnants of mounting tabs along the edges. Vertical fold along the left edge, slightly oxidized on the reverse, with small light reddish spots visible on the front. Reference: Émile Dacier, L'Œuvre gravé de Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, notice historique et catalog raisonné, Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1914, p. 166-167. The subject of this engraving is a police raid on prostitutes, following the new ordinance of 1778. Émile Dacier, in his catalog raisonné, quotes the Secret Memoirs of December 9, 1778: "The ashamed bawds of the capital, not very happy with the last police ordinance concerning public girls, because they did not believe that it was put into execution, begin to complain bitterly about it since they see themselves at the eve of lacking this commodity by the considerable kidnappings which one makes of it..." Gabriel de Saint-Aubin engraved according to his cataloguer Émile Dacier 51 pieces spread out on 25 years . He engraved as an amateur and not as a professional engraver, and was known for drawing in all circumstances, sketching his contemporaries on the spot. His prints with subjects of manners survived in very limited number: "not a piece of which one knows today ten proofs", writes Dacier. "When one encounters these proofs annotated, retouched with a pen, enhanced with washes, covered with watercolor or gouache, how can one not believe that these prints were not drawn most often by the author for himself or for a few of his amateur friends? (Dacier, pp. 9-10). Our print seems to fit well into this category, with its annotations and its small highlights in pen. However Dacier hesitates to classify it in the category of original etchings. He perceives well however in this subject "such characteristic forms where the hand of Gabriel is recognized for sure: the horses, with their small and arched head, on a big body; the feet of the men, always rather awkwardly drawn. However, with a perceptible hesitation, he classifies it in the pieces engraved after Saint-Aubin. He apparently knew of only one print, kept in the Bibliothèque d'Art et d'Archéologie, which he said was "the only known print". It came from the sale of the Count of B*** of May 9, 1903 where, Dacier acknowledges, it was clearly given to the artist ("n° 183 of the catalog, where it is put without reserve under the name of Saint-Aubin, and reproduced"). Ours thus seems to be the second known proof. The dimensions of our print are slightly larger than those he gives (135 x 181 against 132 x 179). Dacier describes it as an "anonymous engraving", "pure etching, unfinished, with numerous retouches in pen and pencil". An examination of our print with a magnifying glass shows that what he takes to be pencil is in fact an effect close to soft varnish (the shading being printed). Our print does bear, as did Dacier's, the initials and date added in pen and ink, as well as a few small additions in pen at the lower left. There is a trace (of a vice or false bite) in the center under the upper square line, which has not yet been erased with a burnisher. We suggest here, contrary to Dacier, that this is a proof duly engraved by Gabriel, where the artist tries a new greyed effect by means of a soft varnish, or perhaps of the sulphur etching. As this poorly mastered process did not give him complete satisfaction, one can assume that he abandoned the idea of making a print and affixed his initials and the date in pen to the very limited number of proofs that were drawn from this copper. The Goncourts analyzed these repeated attempts of the engraver very well: "What we have said about his drawings says enough that the draftsman was born for etching. Etching is the work of the devil and of retouching. The primesaut, the first stroke, the vivacity, the devil in the body, the verve and the hand, it is necessary to have all these graces, to be full of the god, and of patience. Gabriel was the man of this free, running, flying process, full of caprice and unforeseen, with its gripping kitchen, with these mysteries of chemistry, with the surprises or the disappointments of the bite, with the disgust and the resumption of taste for a board which one throws and which one takes again ten times." (Quoted by Dacier, p. 26). It seems that here, he stopped along the way, leaving us an unfinished board although endowed with a spontaneous and picturesque charm.