Description
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 shells. In fact, French naturalist Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d’Argenville even opened his scientific treatise on shells, La Conchyliologie, with a related print by Boucher.
Provenance
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Accession Number
1952.518
Medium
etching and engraving
Dimensions
Image: 25.1 x 15.1 cm (9 7/8 x 5 15/16 in.); Platemark: 27.2 x 17.3 cm (10 11/16 x 6 13/16 in.); Sheet: 36 x 26.5 cm (14 3/16 x 10 7/16 in.)
Classification
Credit Line
Gift of Erich Lederer