BOISSIEU Jean Jacques de (Lyon 1736-1810) : - Oeuvres de Boissieu. Album with 101 of his etchings.

Large in folio, 60,5 x 43,5 cm, collection of 101 + 1 of his engravings, three are on double page, one extra is loosely inserted, 19th-century half Russian leather, with as usual some slight spots and stains but on the whole excellently preserved. Rare collection of over 100 etchings of this French master. Boissieu started his studies with the painter Frontier, he went to Paris where he befriended Greuze, J. Vernet, Soufflot a.o.. He visited Italy in the company of the Duke de La Rochefoucauld. He abandoned painting and took to drawing and engraving. His luminist style is reminiscent of the Dutch 17th & 18th century painters who visited Italy and of whom he rendered in etching some of their paintings (e.g. Ruysdael, Wijnants, Van de Velde). As his oeuvre catalogue contains 142 etchings, the selection on offer here represents over 2/3 of his total output. It contains, apart from his famous selfportrait which is bound in as frontispiece, another 10 portraits, ca. 10 studies of heads and animals, more than 40 landscapes (many of them made in Italy during his stay there with the duke), but also a view of the Pope passing Lyons in 1803, portrait of St Jérôme, of the Pères du Désert, a class interior, a public writer, and ca. 15 etchings after paintings by Ruysdael (4), A. van de Velde, K. Du Jardin, A.Craesbeke, N.Poussin, C.Lorrain, Teniers, Berchem, Van Dyck (one each). The etchings of Boissieu (see Riggs pp.117) are listed in a catalogue made by A.de Boisseau (Paris, Rapilly, 1878), by C. Leblanc in his ''Manuel de L'Amateur des Estampes...'' (Paris 1854, reprint Amsterdam 1970). See also Joubert, Manuel de l'Amateur des Estampes (Paris 1821) vol. II pp 391 406.. .