William Wynne Ryland (British, 1732-1783)
after François Boucher (French, 1703-1770)
published by John Boydell (British, 1719-1804), Benjamin White (British, c. 1725-1794), and Pietro Molini (Italian, c. 1729-1806)
Bathsheba, from A Collection of Prints in Imitation of Drawings
INV-1389
William Wynne Ryland (British, 1732-1783)
after François Boucher (French, 1703-1770)
published by John Boydell (British, 1719-1804), Benjamin White (British, c. 1725-1794), and Pietro Molini (Italian, c. 1729-1806)1764, published 1778
Bathsheba, from A Collection of Prints in Imitation of Drawings
William Wynne Ryland (British, 1732-1783) after François Boucher (French, 1703-1770) published by John Boydell (British, 1719-1804), Benjamin White (British, c. 1725-1794), and Pietro Molini (Italian, c. 1729-1806) →engravingprint
Date
1764, published 1778
Medium
Crayon manner printed in red on cream laid paper
Dimensions
Plate: 46 × 30.5 cm (18 1/8 × 12 1/16 in.); Sheet: 55.1 × 36.3 cm (21 3/4 × 14 5/16 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of Mrs. Isaac K. Friedman
Publisher John Boydell sought to elevate the stature of British connoisseurship of art and to rival France in the production and trade of prints. This print by William Wynne Ryland is a copy of a drawing by François Boucher, now in the British Museum, that was once owned by well-known collector William Esdaile.
Ryland’s studies of crayon-manner engraving in Paris inspired him to develop a simplified version he called stipple engraving, in which a series of dots are punched into a metal plate with a sharp needle tool. Although stipple engraving did not catch on at this time, it gained popularity in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as a means to reproduce the varying tonalities of paintings.