1137 - Jacques-Philippe Le Bas after Nicolas Lancret, “Le Maitre Galant”, fête galante in a park, 18th c.

Jacques-Philippe Le Bas after Nicolas Lancret, “Le Maitre Galant”, fête galante in a park, 18th c. (1707 Paris – 1783 Paris), copper engraving on paper, inscribed below the image “Lancret pinxit” and “J.P. Le Bas Sculp.”, titled “Le Maitre Galant” (The Gallant Master), dedication to the “Comte de Tessin” with armorial cartouche, publisher's address “a Paris chez J.P. Le Bas”, after a painting by Nicolas Lancret, gallant company in a park, at the centre a young couple at a flute lesson, beside them two further persons, a seated woman with a basket and a young man with a staff, in the background a faun, probably as an allegory of the pastoral idyll, on the right a fountain with lion mask and flowing water, detailed rendering of vegetation, architecture and costumes, condition commensurate with age, browned, stained, margins torn, partly secured, image 34x44.5 cm (HxW), overall size 42.5x50 cm (HxW) Jacques-Philippe Le Bas (1707–1783) was apprenticed in 1721 to a Parisian architectural engraver and took Nicolas-Henri Tardieu and Gérard Audran as his models. He gained admission to the Paris Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture with engravings after the “Conversations galantes dans un parc” by Nicolas Lancret; in 1771 he became a councillor of the Academy. In his workshop in the Rue de la Harpe he trained some twenty engravers, among them Robert Strange and William Wynne Ryland; over 500 sheets bear his name, many of them after David Teniers, Watteau, Oudry and Chardin. The painter Nicolas Lancret (1690–1743) trained under Claude Gillot, closely followed the example of Watteau and was received by the Academy in 1719 as a painter of fêtes galantes. The dedicatee Carl Gustaf Tessin (1695–1770) was Swedish envoy in Paris from 1739 to 1742, acquired numerous paintings and drawings there and, as President of the Chancery, headed the Swedish government from 1746 to 1752.