Bernard Picart

Bernard Picart or Picard, was a French draughtsman, engraver and book illustrator in Amsterdam with an interest in cultural and religious habits.

He was born in rue Saint-Jacques, Paris as son of Etienne Picart, a famous engraver. In 1689 he studied drawing and architecture at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. His teachers were Charles le Brun. He was also taught by Benoît Audran the Elder, Sébastien Leclerc and Antoine Coypel. In 1696 he spent a winter Antwerp, where he was well received. He stayed in Amsterdam for more than a year and had commissions before returning to France at the end of 1698. He took over his father's workshop. After his wife Cloudina Pros, the daughter of a bookseller, and children had died, he settled in the Hague together with Prosper Marchand in January 1710. There Picart, Marchand and Charles Levier belonged to a "radical Huguenot coterie", who studied the works of John Locke, who promoted separating church and state. They joined the Walloon church but were influenced by Jean Claude and Pierre Bayle who both fled to the Dutch Republic in earlier years. Picart accepted a commission to draw prints for the Bible. He and Marchand moved to Amsterdam in 1711 (later being joined by his father Étienne Picart (le Romain).

In April 1712 he married Anna Vincent (1684-1736) assisted by her father, who initially disagreed with the marriage. Ysbrand Vincent (1642-1718) was a rich paper seller, who moved to France but fled in 1686. From 1702 on, he was editor of playwrights written by himself or the other members of Nil volentibus arduum Levinus Vincent became his uncle, a Mennonite who owned a cabinet of curiosities in Haarlem, which is also the place where the couple married. Picart moved in with his father-in-law and designed several book frontispieces. In May 1713 the couple had a male twin who both died within a few weeks; he portrayed both. Picart became a citizen, joined the guild and published a book about his teacher Charles Le Brun. His three daughters were baptized in Westerkerk; in between Picart may have had a better understanding of the Dutch language.

In 1711 he collaborated with Cornelis de Bruyn on the frontispiece of Reizen over Moskovie, door Persie en Indie, in 1718 published as Voyages de Corneille le Brun par la Moscovie, en Perse, et aux Indes Occidentales; in 1724 with Philipp von Stosch, a Prussian antiquarian, whose Gemmæ Antiquæ Cælatæ (Pierres antiques graveés), in which Picart's engravings reproduced seventy antique carved hardstones like onyx, jasper and carnelian from European collections, a volume of inestimable value to antiquarians and historians. His most famous work is Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, appearing from 1723 to 1743 and collaborated with Jean Frédéric Bernard, a successful author and publisher who promoted religious tolerance and gallicanism. Between 1733-1736 Bernard published a book about superstition with engravings by Picart. Because of the many prints it also seems he sympathized with Jansenists, the Armenian Apostolic Church and Collegiants. In 1728 Les Césars de l'empereur Julien, traduits du grec par feu Mr. le Baron de Spanheim, avec des remarques & des preuves, enrichies de plus de 300 médailles, & autres anciens monumens, gravés par Bernard Picart le Romain was published. In 1729 he collaborated with Louis Fabricius Dubourg.

At some time (1718?) Picart started an engraving school, his pupils were Jacob Folkema, Jakob van der Schley, who portrayed him posthumously, Pieter Tanjé and François Morellon la Cave, who all used his drawings for engravings. (It seems and according to RKD Johann Philipp Endelich (-1760) was also a pupil.) In 1723/1726 Anna Yver, his mother-in-law and two of her children lived at Rokin; Picart may have used most floors for drawing or engraving and storing paper. In 1731 he published a reprint originally by his father (Le Romain). Picart was buried in the Walloon Church, Amsterdam on 13 May 1733. After his death the widow ordered her three daughters to keep his collection of drawings together but sell the prints at an auction and the copperplates in Paris. In 1734 she published Impostures innocentes, ou recueil d'estampes d'après divers peintres illustres tels que Raphaël, Le Guide, Carlo Maratta, Le Poussin, Rembrandt, etc., gravées à leur imitation et selon le goût particulier de chacun d'eux, et accompagnées d'un discours sur les préjugés de certains curieux touchant la gravure, par Bernard Picart, dessinateur et graveur, avec son éloge historique et le catalogue de ses ouvrages, Veuve de Bernard Picart, Amsterdam. The inventory (on 12 March 1736) mentioned around 400 portfolios with copperplates, books, drawings, paper, 54 paintings (not specified), jewellery and bonds. The website of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has more than 2000 works online by Bernard Picart.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023