Borstbeeld van een oude Russische vrouw 1758 - 1764

Jean- Baptist Leprince made this portrait of an old Russian woman using pen and brown ink with brush and gray wash. The drawing is done on paper, a common enough material, but one that in the 18th century still had associations with commerce and the spread of information. Note how Leprince coaxes out a full tonal range, from the lightest grays to nearly solid black. He’s achieved this with careful hatching and cross-hatching, and also by wetting the paper and letting the ink bleed softly across the surface. The image speaks to the interest of the Enlightenment in cataloging different cultures, but also perhaps to the relative ease with which impressions of far-flung places could be made and shared. Although this work is unique, it could easily be translated into a print and circulated widely. It shows how the intimacy of the hand-drawn mark could be scaled up through reproductive technologies.