overall: frame: 25 1/4 in x 19 1/4 in x 1 in; 64.135 cm x 48.895 cm x 2.54 cm
Object Name:
print
Place made:
United Kingdom: England, London
Date made:
ca 1750
Description:
This engraved image shows a chemist (or alchemist) siting before a table, stirring a small pot on a fire. Two men in the background are reading a paper, perhaps a recipe. A woman, with a cloth over her face and a child in her arms, looks up toward empty money bags hanging from a string, in front of an inflated bladder, a reference to delusion. The inscriptions read: “J. Stein pinxt” and “J. Boydell Sculpt” and “Engraved from the Original Picture in the Collection of Mr. Leviez.”
Jan Steen (about 1626-1679) was a prolific Dutch genre painter with a keen sense of humor. His oil painting, “The Village Alchemist,” done in the 1660s, is now in the Wallace Collection, London.
John Boydell was a prominent engraver and print publisher in London who began in business in 1746 and specialized in reproductive prints. His biographer’s claim that he had all but discontinued producing plates himself by 1760 suggests that this image dates from around mid-century. The National Museum of Science and Industry in London dates this to 1780s, as do other sources.
Charles Leviez was a dancing master in London. Another Leviez was a print seller in Paris.
Ref: John Inganell, <i>The Wallace Collection: Dutch and Flemish</i> (London, 1992), pp. 359-360.
Sven Bruntjen, <i>John Boydell (1719-1804). A Study of Art Patronage and Publishing in Georgian England</i> (New York, 1985).
