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| Marc-Antoine Lemoine | |
|---|---|
| Name | Marc-Antoine Lemoine |
| Birth date | 1741 |
| Death date | 1822 |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Painter, engraver, print publisher |
Marc-Antoine Lemoine was an 18th–19th century French painter, engraver, and print publisher active in Paris and Rome whose works and publications intersected with the circles of Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Antoine Houdon, Anton Raphael Mengs, and collectors associated with the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. He is remembered for portraits, historical subjects, and for a prominent print series that influenced taste among patrons connected to the Comte de Provence, Marie Antoinette, and expatriate communities in Rome. His career bridged late Rococo sensibilities and emerging Neoclassicism in France.
Born in Paris in 1741, he trained in ateliers linked to figures from the late Rococo circle and urban workshops frequented by pupils of François Boucher, Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié, and followers of Carle van Loo. Early formative contacts included sculptors and medallists in the orbit of Jean-Georges Wille and printmakers associated with the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. He traveled to Rome during the period when artists such as Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, Hubert Robert, and Claude-Joseph Vernet were active in the city, encountering collections formed by Cardinal Albani, Pietro Bracci, and the antiquarian networks around Clement XIV. Exposure to plaster casts in the collections of Giovanni Battista Piranesi and the print catalogues circulating from Edme-François Gersaint shaped his technique in engraving and compositional study.
His painting and engraving practice combined portraiture and small-scale history painting informed by the draftsmanship of Jean-Baptiste Greuze and the compositional rigor of Anton Raphael Mengs. Critics and collectors compared certain works to portraits by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun and to genre scenes circulated by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin through print afterlife. He worked as a print publisher and collaborated with copperplate engravers trained in the methods of Jacques-Philippe Le Bas and Pierre-Alexandre Aveline, producing single-sheet prints and series disseminated in the commercial networks around the Rue Saint-Jacques and the print shops near Palais-Royal. His style displays the linear clarity admired by Denis Diderot and the chromatic restraint associated with Guillaume Guillon Lethière and younger adherents of Neoclassicism.
He executed portraits and devotional pictures for patrons including members of the extended circles of the Comte de Provence and bourgeois collectors influenced by the publications of Mercure de France and the salesrooms of the Glanum print trade. His engraved plates reproduced works by Nicolas Poussin, Peter Paul Rubens, and Raphael, contributing to series that circulated alongside prints by Cornelis Bloemaert and Robert Nanteuil. He supplied reproductive engravings for catalogues and private albums commissioned by travelers on the Grand Tour and collaborated with publishers who issued plates alongside texts by Johann Joachim Winckelmann and commentaries in the reviews edited by Denis Diderot and Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard. Several paintings attributed to him entered collections later associated with the Musée du Louvre and provincial collections catalogued in inventories prepared by agents working for collectors such as Horace Walpole and dealers active at the Hôtel Drouot.
During his lifetime he received commissions that brought him into contact with academicians and patrons tied to institutions such as the Académie de Saint-Luc and the remnants of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture before and after the Revolution. Prints and engravings after his designs were acquired by collectors in London, Rome, and Amsterdam, where dealers compared his reproductive skill to that of established engravers like Étienne Fessard and Nicolas-Henri Tardieu. Contemporary critics noted affinities with compositions by Jean-Honoré Fragonard and praised his draftsmanship in catalogues used by collectors on the Grand Tour; later 19th-century art historians referenced his plates in studies alongside the prints of Pierre-Paul Prud'hon and Innocent X—the latter as an organizing reference in certain catalogue raisonné traditions.
He maintained a workshop that functioned as a node for exchange among printmakers, portraitists, and traveling patrons, connecting networks centered on the Pont Neuf and the printing districts near Boulevard Saint-Germain. His activity as a print publisher helped transmit images and taste between Rome and Paris, influencing collectors who built cabinets akin to those of Charles Townley and Sir Joshua Reynolds. After his death in 1822, plates and impressions from his shop entered institutional and private collections catalogued in the inventories of the British Museum, provincial French museums, and auction catalogues from houses like Sotheby's and Christie's. His legacy survives in reproductive plates and in the influence his workshop exerted on younger engravers who would operate in the milieu of the École des Beaux-Arts and the 19th-century print trade.
Category:18th-century French painters Category:19th-century French painters