Pair of Romantic French Hand Coloured Engravings

The 18^th and 19 ^th century saw a decadent sexual revolution for the privileged, where the old-world pressures of church and state behaviour waned and the floodgates to libertine perversity opened. Rococo art was this era's erotic entertainment. Sexually charged paintings and erotic literature were abundant, encouraged and consumed en-masse by all: from tacky prints and scratchy etchings to sensuous oils on canvas. A small armoury of artistic musketeers would dominate French artistic taste and become the emissaries of erotica. The compositions may derive from paintings or prints by artists in the circle of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Nicolas Lavreince, Jean-Frédéric Schall or Antoine Borel, all of whom produced fashionable or intimate scenes of courtship and seduction. French printmakers frequently translated such paintings into engravings for a wider market. Etching and engraving were important means of circulating French artists’ compositions during the 18th century.

Frames from the early 20th Century, 20x24cm.