No. 6: Fountain with Two Tritons Blowing Conch Shells
Medium
etching and engraving
Dimensions
image: 25.1 × 15.1 cm · sheet: 36 × 26.5 cm
Classification
Department
Prints
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift of Erich Lederer
Accession Number
1952.518
Tags
male
About this artwork
François Boucher’s design for a fountain presents an elaborate artistic fantasy with details drawn from mythology and the natural world. Two sea creatures, half-human and half-fish hybrids known as tritons, sit in a shell basin playing a pair of conchs. In the print, Gabriel Huquier transformed Boucher’s rocky grotto into a shell niche featuring the head of the sea god, also called Triton. These designs, though fanciful, reflect a wider Enlightenment interest in the collection and study of shell...