The carter and the milkwoman

An important French etcher and painter. Le Prince first studied painting techniques in his native Metz. He then travelled to Paris around 1750 and became a leading student of the great painter, François Boucher. In 1758 Le Prince journeyed to Russia to work for Catherine the Great at the Imperial Palace, St. Petersburg for five years. When Le Prince returned to Paris in December, 1763, after travelled extensively throughout Finland, Lithuania and even Siberia, he brought with him an extensive collection of drawings which he employed as the basis for a number of fine paintings and etchings, and was elected a full member of the Académie de peinture et de sculpture in 1765. Le Prince's graphic art of Russia and its peoples is significant in that he based his compositions entirely upon his own designs, lending a much more realistic portrayal to his views than other eighteenth century contemporaries. He is also credited with being the first artist (in 1768) to introduce aquatint into his etched and engraved plates. He may even have been the inventor of aquatint, the tonal graphic art that would later be so skillfully used by such masters as Goya, Louis-Philibert Debucourt, Delacroix and Thomas Rowlandson.