Louis Marin Bonnet (1743 - 1793)

Louis Marin Bonnet

Louis-Marin Bonnet (French: Louis-Marin Bonnet) is a French draftsman and engraver, an outstanding master of metal engraving using the “pencil style” technique. Since 1757, Louis-Marais Bonnet was a student of Jean-Charles Francois, then of Gilles Demarteau. He became famous for his color engravings reproducing drawings by A. Watteau, F. Boucher, Sh.-A. Van Loo, J.-B. Yue. Bonnet reproduced mainly complex pastel drawings, using up to eighty boards per engraving. He used opaque paints that gave a matte tone and tinted paper. He reproduced the spaces by printing with white from a separate board. Bonnet even imitated the golden frames bordering the original drawings. This technique is called “pastel style”. In 1769, Bonnet described his technique in detail in the book Pastel in Engraving, Invented and Executed by Louis Bonnet. In 1765-1767, the French master worked in St. Petersburg, where he completed several engraving portraits in the “pencil style” of Catherine II and the heir Pavel Petrovich based on drawings by Jean-Louis de Velli, then returned to Paris and opened his own workshop.