Prints

Beaux-Arts de Paris holds more than 100,000 sheets of prints, as well hundreds of bound albums held with the collection of ancient prints. The collection holds all the reception pieces of the engravers, inherited from the former Royal Academies, and a very beautiful group of engraved collections by French artists from the 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th centuries. Thanks to the school’s prestige, this initial collection was enriched very generously over the following centuries, with donations and bequests that were intended to provide students with the most complete and varied visual repertoire possible. The original prints and interpretations of masters rest beside catalogues of engraving styles : xylographs by the collector Jean Masson, a group of exceptional ornamental etchings  of numerous caricatures by Gavarni, and Daumier by Achille Wasset, the complete oeuvre of Théodore Géricault by Armand-Valton, the engravings of Dürer by Jacques Édouard Gatteaux, the Japanese prints from the Tronquois Lebaudy collection, the complete works of Ducerceau, Rembrandt, Piranèse, and many others, and an encyclopedic array of artists from the collections of Victor Schoelcher and Jules Cloquet. Since the late 20^th century, the collection has grown with works printed on site and which mark important moments for the school: posters for the Bal des Quat’z’Arts and the Atelier Populaire of May 68, the lithographic studio’s archives, and prints by visiting artists, including Pol Bury, Jim Dine, and Mark Dion.

NB: Sheets of prints are found in the 4’z’arts database, and the bound suites in the 4’z’arts books database.

© Jacques-Fabien Gautier d'Agoty, L'Ange anatomique, 1746, mezzotint in four printing plates, 60,5 x 46 cm [cuvette] 80 x 52 cm [feuille]