Jean Joseph Grateloup
Medium
Engraving on China paper
Dimensions
Image: 6.6 × 5.5 cm (2 5/8 × 2 3/16 in.); Plate: 13 × 9.2 cm (5 1/8 × 3 5/8 in.); Sheet: 14.4 × 10.4 cm (5 11/16 × 4 1/8 in.)
Classification
aquatint
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
53674
Art Historical Context
This intimate engraving, titled *Jean Joseph Grateloup*, offers a delicate portrait rendered by French artist Jean-Baptiste de Grateloup. Created as an aquatint on fine China paper, the work measures just over two inches across, highlighting the artist’s skill in miniature printmaking. The technique allows for soft tonal gradations that give the figure a lifelike presence despite the small scale. Aquatint engraving was prized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for its ability to mimic the washes of watercolor while remaining a reproducible print medium. Here, the choice of China paper...
About the Artist
Jean-Baptiste de Grateloup · 1735–1817
Jean-Baptiste de Grateloup (1735–1817) was a French engraver and miniature painter whose long career spanned the final decades of the ancien régime and the upheavals of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. Born in the Landes region of southwestern France, he established himself in Paris as a professional printmaker working across a range of portrait and reproductive subjects. Grateloup's practi...