L'Écolier, from "L'Univers Illustré"
Engraver Henry Linton British
After an intermediary drawing by Edmond Morin French
After Sir Joshua Reynolds British
Not on view
Linton's wood engraving reproduces Reynolds's charming 1779 conception of a schoolboy, a painting owned by the Earls of Warwick, and included in seven nineteenth century exhibitions. Its appearance at Manchester in 1857 was noted in the "Illustrated London News" (October 1857), and the present image subsequently reissued in "L’Univers Illustré" in 1861. The conception echoes Rembrandt, as well as more recent images by Philippe Mercier and Jean Baptiste Greuze, and the accompanying text in the French periodical mused: "Who among us has not pondered our youth in melancholy moments. Our anxiety is assuaged when we laugh at things we once perceived to be unjust tribulations!...The famous English painter Reynolds must have painted his delightful study of the schoolboy...in response to such thoughts, and we do not think anything more natural or expressive than this urchin's head is possible."
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