Antonio Canova

Rajon, an acclaimed reproductive etcher, made this print to accompany an article in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts on the sale of the collection of the Marquis de la Rochebousseau at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris in March 1873. The author describes the exhibition preceding the sale as an important opportunity for Parisians to see works by masters of the British school, who were generally not well represented in French public collections. Jackson made the painting on which the etching is based, now at the Yale Center for British Art, while visiting Rome with his compatriot and fellow Royal Academician, the sculptor Francis Chantrey (1781–1841), who commissioned the portrait of the great neoclassical sculptor Canova (1757–1822).

Credit: Gift of Donato Esposito, 2016