Summer (L'Été)
Medium
Etching and engraving
Dimensions
Plate: 6 5/16 × 7 15/16 in. (16 × 20.1 cm) Sheet: 9 1/8 × 11 5/8 in. (23.2 × 29.5 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Rogers Fund, 1962
Accession Number
62.602.1012
Art Historical Context
This charming print, titled *Summer (L'Été)*, captures the spirit of the season through an elegant allegorical scene typical of 18th-century French decorative. Created between 1740 and1760 as an etching engraving, it likely reproduces a design by the painter Noël Nicolas Coypel, with the plate executed by printmaker Antoine R. Tronchon. The medium allowed artists to translate paintings into affordable, widely distributable images, bringing refined courtly themes into the homes of a growing middle-class audience. Coypel, part of a distinguished family of artists, worked in the graceful Rococo ...
About the Artist
Antoine R. Tronchon|Noël Nicolas Coypel (French|French) · 1690 |1700 –1734 |1800
French, Paris 1690–1734 Paris|French, active 1740–60