Young Girl Holding a Bird (mid-1700s): Art, History and Details

Young Girl Holding a Bird (mid-1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Gilles Demarteau (French, 1722–1776); Jean Baptiste Le Prince (French, 1734–1781).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In 1757, a printmaker named Jean-Charles François developed a printing technique to make facsimiles of chalk drawings. He perfected his method by inventing tools with toothed points of varying thicknesses set at irregular intervals and angles, imitating the random character of grains of chalk on textured paper. Gilles Demarteau adopted François's specialized implements to copy the chalk drawings of such well-known artists as Jean Baptiste le Prince and François Boucher.

Object facts

• Title: Young Girl Holding a Bird
• Date: mid-1700s
• Creator attribution: Gilles Demarteau (French, 1722–1776); Jean Baptiste Le Prince (French, 1734–1781)
• Culture: France
• Type: Print
• Technique: chalk-manner etching and engraving
• Dimensions: Sheet: 22.3 x 26.9 cm (8 3/4 x 10 9/16 in.); Platemark: 21.5 x 25.7 cm (8 7/16 x 10 1/8 in.)
• Collection: PR - Chalk Manner
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1927.335

Collection credit

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.