Vrouw met twee kinderen 1757 - 1768

Louis Marin Bonnet created this chalk-manner print of a woman and two children sometime before 1793. It’s made using a labor-intensive process, attempting to replicate the texture and tonality of a chalk or pastel drawing. The image is built up from a series of etched lines, which hold the ink and create the image. The challenge for Bonnet was to translate the soft, diffuse quality of chalk into the more rigid medium of printmaking. The result is a lovely simulation, but one that inevitably reveals its artifice. The hatching marks, and the way they build up areas of shadow, all speak to the work involved in the production process. This print, in its way, stands for all reproductive technologies. While it conveys a sentimental image of domestic life, the means of its making is equally important, reminding us of the labor, politics, and consumption of art in eighteenth-century France. When you look at this image, consider both its subject matter and the complex methods used to bring it into being.