Les tours de cartes (The card trick)
1744
Medium
Engraving in black on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 25.5 × 30.8 cm (10 1/16 × 12 3/16 in.); Plate: 30.5 × 32.7 cm (12 1/16 × 12 7/8 in.); Sheet: 42.5 × 52.3 cm (16 3/4 × 20 5/8 in.)
Classification
engraving
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
202414
Art Historical Context
Step into the playful world of 18th France with *Les tours de cartes (The trick)*, a captivating engraving by Louis Surugue from 1744. This finely detailed print, executed in black ink on ivory laid, features an image size of 25.5 × 30.8 cm within larger plate and sheet margins. Housed in the Art Institute of Chicago's Prints Drawings department, it exemplifies the era's Rococo fascination with leisure, performance, and lighthearted social scenes. Surugue, a master French engraver active in the mid-1700s, employed the precise burin technique—incising lines into a metal plate to hold ink—creat...