Lavoisier Antique French Revolution Aquatint Portrait Levachez 1799 Framed

An original French Revolution portrait of Lavoisier, 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 ANTOINE LAURENT LAVOISIER, FERMIER GÉNÉRAL NÉ A PARIS LE 16 AOUT 1743. Jugé le 16 floréal l'an 2. Lavoisier is shown seated in his laboratory among retorts and flasks, gesturing as a group of men burst in to arrest him.

Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, identified and named oxygen and hydrogen and established the law of conservation of mass. His role as a fermier général, one of the hated private tax collectors of the Ancien Régime, led to his arrest during the Terror, and he was guillotined in May 1794. (Most biographies give his birth as 26 August; the plate reads 16.) Of interest to collectors of the history of science as well as of the Revolution.

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 bearing to the reverse the trade label of Samuel Jennings, 16 Duke Street, Manchester Square, London - "To Her Majesty the Queen & the Royal Family, Estab'd 1824". The National Portrait Gallery's directory of British framemakers records Samuel Jennings, Carver, Gilder & Printseller at 16 Duke Street, Manchester Square, London from 1850 to 1885, so this print has been in an English collection since the Victorian period. Offered from a group of these portraits framed by Jennings.

Condition: age-toning and foxing to the paper consistent with age; 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.