Jacques-Philippe Le Bas

Jacques-Philippe Le Bas or Lebas (* 1707 , † 1783 in Paris ) was a French engraver of the rococo .

Life

Le Bas was a student of the engraver and illustrator Antoine Hérisset (1685–1769) in Paris, who was known at the time for his architectural views (Palace of Versailles) and site plans (Forêt de Fontainebleau). He stabbed foreign templates; In his day, engravings based on masterpieces of art history were very popular and a coveted collector's item. More than 500 engravings are known from Le Bas. With the engraving The Sermon of John the Baptist, based on a painting by Pier Francesco Mola (1612–1666), he made himself known to the educated society of the French Rococo. The Dutch baroque painter Nicolaes Pietersz. Berchem (1620–1683), Philip Wouwerman (1619–1668), Adriaen van Ostade (1610–1685) and Wouwerman's imitator, Carel van Falens (1683–1733), were initially the preferred masters after whom Le Bas trained his engraving technique , but the artist he later preferred to work after was David Teniers (1610–1690). Le Bas knew how to transfer the exuberance and fine brushwork of his role model into the copperplate technique, which he often revised with the drypoint technique. More than 100 engravings after Teniers are known from Le Bas; there are also over 30 engravings after Claude Joseph Vernet (1714–1789), a painter who worked at the court of Louis XV.

He was the most popular and busiest of all French engravers, but he also frequently signed prints that were made by his students under his direction. A hundred years after Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), Le Bas rediscovered the drypoint technique and brought it to perfection. In 1771 he became a member of the Académie royale (today Académie des Beaux-Arts), in 1782 Louis XVI awarded him the title of Royal Engraver. The famous portrait of Le Bas was engraved by his pupil Charles-Etienne Gaucher (1741–1804), who also made a name for himself as a portraitist in France. Le Bas died in Paris on April 14, 1783.

Works

after Pier Francesco Mola

• The sermon of John the Baptist

after David Teniers the Elder J.

• The seven works of mercy
• The lost Son
• The Temptation of Saint Anthony (two versions)

literature

• Ferdinand Hoefer : Nouvelle Biographie générale . t. 30. Firmin-Didot, Paris 1881, p. 65.
• Jean Adhémar : The European graphic . Edition Aimery Somogy, Paris undated