Debret, teacher of drawing: unpublished prints from the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France

Abstract

This article presents and discusses three sets of prints by Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768-1848) discovered at the Département des Estampes et de la Photographie of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, in Paris, and so far not yet published in Brazil. The first group was engraved by Gilles-Antoine Demarteau (1750-1802) in 1802; and the other two by L. M. Petit between c. 1810-1813, the Nouveau Recueil Élémentaire de Dessin and the têtes d´étude d´après David. The primary aim of this research is to produce a historical philology of these engravings, discussing topics related to authenticity, attribution, goals and correspondence to other similar works of the same period. Secondary aims encompass trying to understand the peculiarities of these plates, how do they fit into the context of pedagogical prints production at the beginning of the 19th century, and how its author’s French and Brazilian careers can be reinterpreted by the means of the new data and the suggested discussions. The adopted methodology was based on the analysis and confrontation of concerned bibliography, documents and information already known about the artist´s biography.