LE CLERC, Sébastien I - b. 1637 Metz, d. 1714 Paris - WGA

LE CLERC, Sébastien I

(b. 1637 Metz, d. 1714 Paris)

Sébastien Le Clerc I (also Leclerc), printmaker, draughtsman and military engineer, part of a French family of artists. Laurent Le Clerc (1590-1695) was a goldsmith from Metz. The most prominent members of the Leclerc family were his son Sébastien Leclerc I and Sébastien’s son Sébastien Le Clerc II. Another son of Sébastien Le Clerc, Louis-Auguste Le Clerc (1699-1771), was a sculptor and pupil of Antoine Coysevox; from 1735 he worked in Denmark, becoming professor at the Kongelige Akademi for de Skonne Kunster in Copenhagen. His son and pupil Jacques-Sébastien Le Clerc (1734-1785) became a painter, producing small-scale amorous scenes; from 1778 he taught at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris.

Sébastien Le Clerc I probably learnt the rudiments of drawing and engraving from his father, and also from Claude Bouchard, a copper-plate printer; however, he soon abandoned line engraving for etching. Le Clerc’s earliest works that can be securely dated are from the years 1654-55. His first important series were the Life of St Benedict (1658-59) and Les Modes de Metz, later republished in Paris. Having also studied geometry, perspective and mathematics, Le Clerc became in 1660 a military engineer, working for Henri, Maréchal de La Ferté-Sénectere (1600-80), governor of Lorraine.

Funeral Service for Chancellor Séguier

In the ancien r�gime, funerals were characterized by the same mixture of pomp, complexity, and dignity as the other ceremonies and festivities. For the funeral of Chancellor Pierre S�guier, Charles Lebrun erected a catafalque, as shown in the engraving by S�bastien Le Clerc.

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Siege of the Fortress of Douai, Flanders, by the French Army in 1667

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The Academy of Sciences and Fine Arts

In the second half of the 17th century all of Europe admired - though no one really imitated - France’s various academies: art (established in 1648), science (1666) and architecture (1671). These academies were not only repositories of knowledge, they also backed extensive operations such as factories (tapestries, mirrors)and specialized workshops directed by superintendents and their agents. Never had artistic life been organized so thoroughly, so precisely, so extensively. This was the work of Colbert and his circle.

Le Clerc’s engraving celebrates the flowering of activities employing measurement, computation, and draftsmanship. Various instruments are assembled on a vast esplanade framed by noble architecture, suggesting an entire program for the study of techniques, which would assume great importance among cultivated circles in the century to come. Contact between scientific research artistic problems increased and mechanical techniques became more fashionable. This trend would culminate in, and be recorded by, the publication of the Encyclop�die.

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