From its beginning, Artists and Amateurs: Etching in Eighteenth-Century France, honouring and exploring a medium that is too often relegated to the back corners of painting exhibitions or added as a last-ditch effort to fill wall space, is deeply satisfying. Perhaps it is the more-royal-than-royal blue wall colour, cuing viewers into the relative novelty of the exhibition; perhaps it is the well-paced layout; or perhaps it is curator Perrin Stein’s enthusiasm for the medium. Whatever the factor, there is an immediate sense that something delicious awaits beyond every doorframe and at every new wall. As it draws visitors into a complex story of printmaking and its proponents, both visual and financial, Artists and Amateurs assumes an academically charming quality, lending to the museum goer an exciting period eye. Although it does not quite reach the ‘spontaneity, experimentation and whimsy’ with which the works are first introduced in a wall text, it comes close, taking viewers on an exhilarating tour of eighteenth-century practice along the way.

 

The exhibition is divided neatly into four sections across four galleries, a format that, although somewhat conservative, is suitable for both seasoned professionals wishing to take a comprehensive look at the period and those for whom etching is a completely new concept. The first (Learning to Etch) begins with a fact art historians have known or suspected for some time: printmaking has long been the less-favoured child of the arts, and by the same token, long needed to receive its proper due. The exhibition does justice to the medium: especially titillating is a cover plate from Carle Vanloo’s Six Figures Académiques (1743), just a whisper from Winckelmann as its beautiful, young male subject casts his eyes downward, the soft rise of his chest almost palpable. Other gems include multiple impressions of Antoine Watteau’s Recruits Going to Join the Regiments (c.1715-16), François Boucher’s Andromeda (1734), and a waist-level display of a copper plate and etching needle, presenting firsthand the relation of student to teacher, colleague to colleague, and practitioner to practice. Within the general theme of ‘learning to etch’ the last is especially successful, as the height of the case – as if one is standing at a writing table – gels with the instructive sentiment of the gallery. Delightful for their wackiness, dark humour and proto-modernist edge meanwhile are Louis Jean Desprez’ skeletal and multi-headed Chimera (c. 1777-84) devouring a human and Día-de-los-Muertos-like Tomb with Death Seated (c. 1779-84), inviting viewers into bizarre and stupendous scenes from the artist’s expansive imagination. Offering additional works by Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, Jean-Etienne Liotard, and Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, the first gallery sets a tone of wonder and excitement for the remainder of the show.

 

Selling Etchings in Eighteenth-Century France walks the visitor through the roles of both professional and non-professional printmakers and the practices that brought their works into the eighteenth-century public eye. There is truly something for every viewer. Claude Gillot’s ornate, joyously packed Festival etchings (printed before 1728) nearly leak perfume from the page, enough to make any enthusiast of the Rococo swoon. Jean-Baptiste Oudry’s Return from the Hunt with a Dead Roe (1725, printed 1736) and Charles Germain de Saint-Aubin’s unexpected La Toilette (1748) will please the occasional lover of the danse macabre. Pierre Moreau’s scenes of Rome (1760) evoke the Grand Tour aesthetic, preparing viewers for a wash of delectable Hubert Roberts in the following section, while Charles Thévenin’s The Storming of the Bastille (1790) moves visitors away from the archaic dreamscapes of Italy and back to a glorious and gory French history. Even the inclusion of Jean-François-Pierre Peyron’s utterly dismal, coronary-inducing Death of Socrates (1790, after the 1787 painting) is somehow endearing as it gives viewers a practical example of printmaking’s relationship to painting, production, and circulation.

 

The third gallery, Etching in the Eternal City, is more than enough to whet the palate of any print scholar or printmaker who has not yet had the opportunity to pay homage to the ever-inspiring city of Rome. Especially delicious are Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre’s fantastical Masquerade Chinoise (1735), depicting students in Chinese costume during Carnival, and Country Dance (c. 1735-40), in which we can almost see de Staël’s Corinne dancing amidst the ruins. Joseph Vernet’s maudlin Return from Fishing (before 1752) displays a port scene in Italy, instructing and delighting viewers as a visual text from the period. A fair amount of Orientalism, perhaps a reminder of the eighteenth century’s more sinister history, is brought to us in plates from Joseph-Marie Vien’s Caravanne du Sultan à la Mecque (1778). With these works and others (although a concrete connection to the section’s Rome theme is occasionally tenuous) the gallery offers a thrilling glimpse into one of the century’s most celebrated European rites of passage.

 

The final gallery, covering collaborations between artists and amateurs, provides a satisfying finish to a show that – while highly engaging – begins to drag a bit by the end. Wall texts shed light on the artistic, monetary and intellectual relationships between the two, while etchings by artists – that is, formally trained professionals – and amateurs – here defined as both patrons and those who practiced the arts in an occasional and largely non-professional or recreational manner – often find a space beside each other. The caricatures by the amateur Ange-Laurent de la Live de Jully are welcome and quirky; artist Jean-Baptiste Le Prince’s The Washerwoman (1771), printed in a still-strong brown ink, pays a lovely tribute to Boucher, and Madame de Pompadour’s The Young Savoyard (1751), in all his sweetness, is the perfect way to wind down a whirlwind tour.

 

In closing, Artists and Amateurs is not without its faults, but they are small. At times, pieces seem to have been added hastily to fill wall space, a testament, however ambivalent, to the Met’s longstanding vacuum-cleaner approach to collecting. To its credit or its error, the show is not a blockbuster; visitors itching to see what the museum has advertised as its greatest ‘masterpieces’ – despite the number of stunning and rare pieces in the show – should continue down the hall. Those willing to hear themselves think and learn will do well to linger in these galleries, however, surely coming to the conclusion that it was worth the trip.

 

Artists and Amateurs: Etching in Eighteenth-Century France is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from 1 October 2013 until 5 January 2014.