Fouquier Tinville Public Prosecutor Terror French Revolution Aquatint Framed

An original French Revolution portrait of Fouquier-Tinville, the portrait roundel engraved in aquatint by Levachez and the narrative vignette beneath designed and etched by Duplessi-Bertaux, dated in the plate l'An 7 de la Rép. (1798-99).

The lettering reads FOUQUIER-TAINVILLE, NÉ À HÉROUAN, DÉPT DE L'AISNE, EN 1747. ACCUSATEUR PUBLIC AU TRIBUNAL RÉVOLRE. Jugé à mort le 17 floréal, et décapité le 18, l'an 3. The vignette shows the crowded courtroom of the Revolutionary Tribunal.

Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville was public prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal during the Terror, sending Marie-Antoinette, the Girondins and Danton to the guillotine. After Thermidor he was tried himself and executed in 1795.

This plate comes from the celebrated series of revolutionary portraits issued with the Tableaux historiques de la Révolution française in Paris. Each plate follows the same format: a finely worked aquatint portrait by Charles-François-Gabriel Levachez in a circular medallion, above an etched vignette by Jean Duplessi-Bertaux showing a defining moment in the sitter's life, with the lettering beneath. The portraits were issued in instalments from the late 1790s and added to the Tableaux historiques in its 1802 edition; impressions are held by the Musée Carnavalet in Paris.

Framing and provenance: in an ebonised reeded frame, one of a group of matching frames bearing the trade label of Samuel Jennings, Carver, Gilder & Printseller, 16 Duke Street, Manchester Square, London, where the National Portrait Gallery records him from 1850 to 1885.

Condition: age-toning and foxing to the paper consistent with age, with foxing to the lower margin; please see all photographs, which form part of the description. Frame with wear commensurate with age. Hanging wire to the reverse. Not examined out of the frame.

Size: 28 x 22.5 cm framed.

Carefully packed and posted. Please ask if you would like any further photographs or measurements.